That is a very bad start to this sordid little arrangement.
“Am I going to regret this?” he growls with a warning tone in his voice.
“No, no.” I’m still so rattled that I know I’m for sure coming off as a world-class ditz. Earth to Charlotte: get your shit together.
“Is the, um, room I chose for Tiana upstairs okay?”
His hands are tucked in his pockets. He frowns. “It’s fine. Do you need anything else, or can I get back to my life now?”
I swallow hard past the knot in my throat. “I think that’s it. I should probably get to bed. In case she gets up early.”
We’re standing outside the door to my bedroom now.
Kostya nods curtly. “She gets up at six. Don’t be late.”
“Six. Got it. Well, good night.”
He turns without saying anything.
I watch as he strides away toward the door at the end of the hall—his room. The master bedroom. I might’ve guiltily poked my head in during my earlier tour and seen the four-poster canopy bed, the walk-in closet bigger than my apartment, the bathroom with attached sauna and hot tub. It was a quick glance. Just long enough to notice that there were no women’s clothes in the closet.
I walk into my own room and shut the door and lean against it. It feels cold. Foreign. The man on the other end of the hall feels the exact same way.
I sink to the floor and put my head in my hands.
What have I gotten myself into?
5
Charlotte
After a night full of unwanted hot and heavy dreams about my boss—none of which I have even a tiny little tidbit of desire to analyze in the light of day—I wake up before the sun.
And on the coattails of those dreams, I close my eyes and relive every single second of last night’s daydream. Again.
Only this time, I don’t let him walk away.
I don’t go into my room alone and lie down to sleep.
Instead, I close my fingers and imagine that, instead of keeping his hand in mine as we walk away from Tiana’s room, he tangles it in my hair, rubs up against me, crushes my lips with his. In the closest thing to a wet dream I’ve had since I first got a crush on my neighbor Adam Newbert in the seventh grade, Kostya pushes me against the wall and nudges my legs apart with his knee, as he breaks the kiss long enough to rip my shirt over my head.
And now I’m breathing heavily, wishing I could feel his fingers gliding down my throat to my chest, then the valley between my breasts, and finally across one pert nipple, a nipple he would pinch between his thumb and forefinger.
My body is humming, and my panties are damp as I picture his body, long and lean and sculpted by the freaking angels, stretched out beside me on his big, beautiful bed while he uses his mouth and his hands to make my cells sing, and I whisper his name into the silence.
“Kostya.”
When I hear my own voice, I realize what I’m doing: touching myself while I fantasize about a man I can’t have, a man who—if sleazy reporters at panini restaurants are to be believed—may or may not be a Russian mobster.
A man who, even if he is not that, is certainly a Grade-A asshole.
The thought of the criminal accusations doesn’t scare me as much as it should. Probably because now I’m picturing him spanking me, and it’s so hot I don’t know if I’m going to be able to look at him ever again. The word “sir” is going to have a whole new connotation.
My cheeks and my ears are burning, and I’m so glad no one can read my mind right now. It’s one thing to have the occasional—okay, fine, daily—covert fantasy about a man like Kostya.
It’s a whole ’nother thing entirely to play with myself while I imagine my boss seducing me.
This is an attraction I have no choice but to nip right in my blooming and throbbing bud. I cannot, under any circumstances, let myself be blindly attracted to Kostya Zinon while I’m responsible for caring for his daughter. Living in his house. Taking money to do a conscientious job as a caretaker.
I climb out of bed and go to the door that connects my room to Tiana’s. She’s asleep, snuggled with a bear she had in a suitcase she brought with her. The bear has one missing eye, stitches in its left paw, and a misshapen ear. Clearly, a favorite toy. Tiana’s rendition of a security blanket.
I only hope Kostya lets her keep it. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t picture him accommodating her need for comfort. Or, more accurately, understanding her need for comfort.
On my tiptoes, I back out and shut the door behind me. A new home and new adults in her life have probably exhausted her, or confused her at the very least, and she needs sleep. I can use the time until she wakes up to make breakfast and lay out a plan for the day. There is still so much to do to get the house ready for a little girl.
And not just the house. She’s three. There are a million things a three-year-old girl will need done for her, and it’s now all my responsibility. Kostya will probably be the kind of father who expects a well-spoken, athletic, educated-beyond-her-age daughter, the same way he is a well-spoken, athletic, educated, powerful businessman.
And he’ll expect me to make it happen.
If I fail … people who fail Kostya don’t return to the office, I long ago noticed. For all I know, they don’t survive long enough to explain.
Stop it. That’s the reporter getting in my head again.
I brushed him off at the time and thought nothing
