Chapter 8 #3
He moves so fast my back hits the edge of his desk before I register he's closed the distance. One hand fists in my hair, the other grips my hip.
"You want to make this transactional?" His voice is a growl against my ear that vibrates through every bone in my body. "Fine. But don't pretend you're in control."
The low timbre of his voice should infuriate me or at least intimidate me.
I hitch my chin higher. "Prove I'm not."
His hand leaves my hair and drags down my body, over my breast, my ribs, my stomach. Stronger, determined fingers find the button of my jeans. The zipper hisses open, loud in the quiet office, and then his hand slides inside my panties and through the slick heat between my thighs.
We both have our answer.
"Wet." A growl against my throat. "Did you touch yourself in the shower thinking about me?"
My face flames. He laughs, dark and knowing, and crooks his fingers inside me.
I suck in a harsh breath. Our eyes catch.
Kon’s scent fills me and the electric tingles draping over my body cause me to shudder.
He has my body on constant high alert. The look on his face is one of hunger.
His lips are parted but it’s not his mouth that has all my focus.
It’s the way his hard shaft pressesagainst my thigh.
"You did." His voice drops to a low, satisfied rumble, the smug certainty spreading across his face in a slow grin that makes me want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.
He crooks his fingers inside me and my knees nearly buckle.
"How long did it take for you to come all over your fingers, malyshka? "
My chin lifts, our equal amounts of stubbornness pitting for dominance. "Fuck you."
"Mm. That's the plan." He withdraws his hand and my hips chase his retreating fingers. "But first, tell me what you want."
"You know what I want."
"Say it."
"I want you to fuck me. Right here. And then I want my question answered."
He runs the tips of his fingers over my bare arms until the lengths of my hair are in his hands. "Done."
He spins me around, bends me over the desk.
Papers scatter and a pen clatters to the floor.
Behind me, the metallic clink of his belt buckle sends a pulse of heat straight between my thighs.
The rasp of his zipper follows, slow and deliberate, and the sound is so filthy in the quiet of his office that my fingers curl tighter around the edge of the desk.
Cool air hits my skin as he yanks my jeans and panties down to my thighs, trapping my legs together.
"Hold on to the desk."
His palm presses between my shoulder blades, flattening my chest against the cool wood.
I grip the far edge and the swollen head of his cock notches against my entrance.
One brutal thrust and he's buried to the hilt.
I cry out, my inner walls clenching around him in shock and pleasure and the desperate, aching sense that this is exactly where I belong.
He sets a punishing rhythm. Each thrust drives me harder against the wood, my cheek pressed to the desktop, my fingers white-knuckled on the far edge. The desk groans beneath us. More papers slide to the floor.
He grips my hips, fingers digging into yesterday's bruises, and the pain sharpens the pleasure until the two blur together. From this angle he reaches deeper, fuller, dragging against nerves that send sparks behind my eyes.
"Touch yourself." The command comes out harsh, breathless. "I want to feel you come on my cock."
I release one edge of the desk and snake my hand between my body and the wood. My fingers find the swollen bundle of nerves where we're joined, circling once, twice.
The orgasm tears through me so hard my vision whites out.
I clench around him and his name rips from my throat, raw and uncontrolled.
He follows with a roar, his hips stuttering, the hot rush of his release pulsing inside me.
His grip on my hair tightens, then releases as his forehead drops between my shoulder blades.
We stay like that, gasping, the desk creaking under us. Papers scattered across the floor.
"I gave you three shell companies, a shipping route, and a warehouse location." I press my cheek against the cool wood and catch my breath. "I believe that earns me a question."
His chest vibrates against my back with a low laugh. "You're collecting already?"
"A deal's a deal, Beast."
A pause. Then his voice, rough and wrecked against my shoulder blade. "Ask it."
My brain takes a moment to come back online.
"The Syndicate." I lick my lips, tasting salt. "How did you all come together? What binds you?"
He pulls out slowly and I wince, bracing against the desk.
The clink of his belt, the rasp of his zipper.
Then his hands are pulling my jeans up with surprising gentleness.
He turns me around, lifts me onto the desk, and stands between my thighs.
His expression is guarded, but something in his eyes has gone soft.
"In the simplest term, trauma." He says it simply, the way you'd say water or air.
Something elemental. "Each of us carries wounds.
We found each other at our lowest points and chose to become family.
" His thumb traces my cheekbone, oddly tender after what we just did.
"Rafael found me in Moscow, half-dead and feral.
Drake saved Luca from a Colombian drug lord.
Massimo walked away from a legacy that would have destroyed him.
Rowan..." He pauses. "Rowan's story isn't mine to tell. "
"And that's enough? Shared trauma? That keeps you loyal to each other? That’s hard to believe. Shared DNA and blood couldn't keep my family loyal."
"DNA and blood isn’t always what makes a family. We'd kill for each other. Die for each other." His hand drops from my face. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for my brothers."
The conviction in his voice twists a longing so sharp between my ribs it steals my breath. My family was a cage. His is a fortress.
I cock a brow and my fingers involuntarily go to the ink on his forearm. "Same time tomorrow?"
From the smirk etched at the corners of his lips he thinks he’s won. "Will that become a daily question?"
"Is that a no?"
"That's a 'we both know I'll find you before tomorrow.'"
A shiver rolls down my spine. He steps back and I slide off the desk on unsteady legs, straightening my clothes, running fingers through my wrecked hair.
"I need to work. Review my files."
"Eat first." He nods toward the kitchen. "You barely touched breakfast."
"I was a little busy getting bent over your desk."
"Multitask."
I snort. Actually snort. "Did you just make a joke?"
"I've been known to." He's already walking toward the door. "Use my office. I have calls to make."
"You sure? I just..." I glance at the scattered evidence.
"I'm sure." Something warm and possessive flickers behind his eyes. "I like knowing you're close."
My ribs squeeze tight around a warmth that has no business being there. Six words. Six stupid words and my whole chest goes soft, the way it does when you hear something you didn't know you needed until someone said it out loud.
No one has ever wanted me close. My father kept me at arm's length. My uncle wanted me gone. Every editor in New York wanted me to disappear because, yeah, who the hell wants a mafia boss’s daughter hanging around. Short-minded prick.
And this man, this beast who bought me at auction four days ago, wants me in his chair. In his space. Close.
I shove the feeling down so hard it bruises my tender heart.
"Noted." That's all I can manage. I nod, gather my dignity, and settle into his chair while he disappears down the hall.
The leather is still warm from his body. I try not to think about how much that pleases me.
I open my laptop for the first time since Kon handed me my bag yesterday morning.
The screen blinks to life. I put in my biometrics and password.
Five seconds and my old files stare back at me, exactly as I left them the night everything went sideways.
Preliminary Malone research. Shell company names I'd traced through public records.
The warehouse photos and guard schedules I'd backed up to the cloud weeks ago, before Seamus figured out what I was doing.
It's a skeleton. The bones of an investigation without the meat. The real evidence, the shipping manifests, the financial records, the witness statements, all of it is sitting inside the wall back at my father’s mansion. Months of work I can't touch.
But skeletons can be rebuilt. Especially when the man down the hall is feeding me intel no journalist could get on their own.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I create a new folder.
SYNDICATE RESEARCH.
I click it open and start typing. The layout of The Foundry, as much as I've mapped from my tour and my wandering yesterday. Names mentioned in passing. Notes on Scarlet Thorn and the wish system and the men who control it all.
Insurance. Just in case.
Just in case of what, I still can't bring myself to examine.
I create a new document inside the folder.
ASSET ASSESSMENT: KONSTANTIN VETROV
Background: Bratva-connected. Primary enforcer for Red Letter Syndicate. Handles "problem resolution" and high-risk acquisitions. Body count unknown but presumed significant.
Physical: Approximately 6'3", heavily muscled. Extensive tattoo work, primarily barbed wire motif with roses. Multiple scars indicating historical trauma.
Behavioral observations: Controlled. Economical with words and movement. Predator-like stillness when focused. Cooks as apparent coping mechanism. Maintains rooftop garden. Shows unexpected tenderness in private moments.
Assessment:
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
I should write something clinical. Professional. Something that doesn't reveal how thoroughly this man has gotten under my skin in four days.
I type: Subject is more dangerous than anticipated. He's violent when needed and infuriatingly calm under pressure. Admitted killer.
My fingers freeze over the keys. The cursor blinks at the end of the sentence, patient, waiting for me to finish the thought I'm already regretting.
Because that's not what makes him dangerous. Not to me.
I type: Cooks breakfast without being asked. Grows roses on a rooftop in Chicago. Whispered Russian against my skin while I fell apart and held me like I was something worth being careful with.
The words glow on the screen in the dim light of his office, my own handwriting of a confession I never intended to make.
The leather of his chair is warm against my back, still carrying the shape of his body, and the whole room smells like old paper and cedar and the fading ghost of what we just did on this desk. My throat tightens.
I stare at the words until they blur.
Damn.
My finger finds the delete key and holds it down, watching the letters disappear one by one, erasing the truth character by character until the cursor blinks alone on an empty line. My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with the bruises on my hips.
I replace it with something sterile. Something a real journalist would write. Something that doesn't make me sound like a woman falling for her captor four days into captivity.
Further observation required. Will continue gathering intelligence as opportunity allows.
Save. Close.
I shut the laptop and press my palms flat against the cool surface, curling my fingers around the edges until the metal bites into my skin.
Outside the office window, the city hums its usual indifferent song.
Somewhere down the hall, Kon's low voice rumbles through a phone call in Russian, the words unintelligible but the cadence as familiar to me now as my own heartbeat.
That realization alone should terrify me.
And it does.
I can delete words from a screen. I can bury the truth under clinical language and professional distance and every wall I know how to build. But I can't delete it from my own body.
And my body is still trembling.