Not that this expensively perfumed witch knows any of that. No one does. To her, I am merely Kostya Zinon, elusive financier and billionaire property developer. It’s best that way for all involved.
“Oh, darling”—I still can’t think of her name—“you shouldn’t listen to rumors.”
She leans in close, the smell of cranberry vodka on her breath repulsively strong. “Why don’t you meet me in my room? You can teach me the error of my ways.” She adds the last part in a whisper against my throat as her fingernail traces a line over my jaw.
I chuckle more at her audacity than at her offer. Her husband is across the dance floor, a senator working the guests—playing up his part in the improved relations of our countries—while his wife works her hand around my bicep. She’s all but screaming that she wants to be fucked.
To be fair, my cock is hard, and this woman is standing close enough to me that perhaps she notices it. The erection is not for her, though. I’ve been wrestling all night with the memory of Charlotte, bent over on hands and knees on the floor of my office this afternoon, picking up a cup of pens she clumsily knocked off my desk. The creamy white of her thighs beckoned to me as the black pencil skirt crept higher and higher and …
The witch takes my sigh as an agreeable moan and leans in to purr against my earlobe. “Room 306. In an hour.” She gives a tug to my sleeve, a slow wink, then sashays with heels clicking to where her husband is standing, oblivious to his wife’s adulterous scheming.
Stupid American. More money than sense.
I do not suffer such foolishness. If I let myself be the kind of man who took up offers like that, I would never have clothes on. I’d be too busy diving into every blonde made of plastic and Botox that hit on me—with her husband thirty feet away—while her cloud of Chanel failed to cover the stench of cigarette smoke. My businesses would fail. The flow of money would dry up, and the Sieczkarek Hospital would have to look elsewhere for the funding for the new neonatal intensive care unit I’m financing.
Better to keep my distance.
My fingers drift absentmindedly to my cufflinks—diamond-encrusted Russian brown bears, the national animal of my country—a gift from Charlotte. Once again, my mind flashes on an image of her bent over my desk as she straightened up what few accoutrements I keep in my office. The soft curve of her hips in that midnight black pencil skirt. The image alone is enough to send another rush of blood to my cock.
I need to get my fucking mind straight. Screwing my assistant is a recipe for disaster, just as much as heading to Room 306 in an hour to tango with a senator’s wife would be. I plan on doing neither. And yet, my libido is begging me to reconsider the former option.
I’m standing in a room full of the overdressed elite—enough money and power circulating around me to give any social climber a hard-on—but it is the mental image of my assistant’s soft, pale flesh that is distracting me from the task at hand. I am remembering how she stumbled over the area rug in my office—the one she insisted I needed to “breathe some life into the room”—as she stepped back to pick a mote of dust from the shoulder of my suit. A simple touch, an innocent one at the time, but as I think back on it now, it feels less pure. More tense. Less like grooming, and more like foreplay.
I caught her when she tripped against me and held on a moment longer than necessary, but letting her go wasn’t easy. Not when I wanted to fist my hand in the roots of her hair and yank back to expose that soft, tender neck. Not when I wanted to hike her skirt up over her hips and spread her thighs farther than she’d ever spread them for another man.
But I had to let go of her. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from fucking her senseless then and there.
What I force myself to remember is this: the feeling of wanting to drive my cock into Charlotte is no more than that—a feeling. I know damn well what happens when I let my emotions drive my decision-making. Even an emotion as base and reductive as sexual desire can be dangerous when misapplied.
No, my thoughts are best kept to tonight’s work, and far away from young, innocent Charlotte.
I let out a long breath and finish the three fingers of whiskey in my glass.
I close my eyes to reorient myself. Control, Kostya, I admonish silently. Get your shit together. Charlotte’s curves fade away. The cold hard steel of concentration takes her place.
I need no limitations; I will tolerate no distractions. I will make room only for the presence of mind to do what needs to be done.
My silent meditation prevents me from immediately noticing the man coming for me. One rabid foot tangles with the other as he falls forward. His champagne spews on the front of my jacket and shirt, as the bulb of the glass shatters into my chest.
Clumsy bastard.
He catches himself and stands upright unsteadily, holding the stem of what’s left of his glass. I clench my fist, ready—always ready—to feel the crunch of his jaw beneath my fingers. He looks up, and mumbles condescendingly through fat, drunken lips, “Oh, big man, too slow to get out of the way.”
He gives me a petulant shove, and my head throbs with the need to crush him.
“Move!” he snarls.
He would be wise to exercise more caution. One more shove, and he’ll find himself in a dumpster by morning.
“Excuse me,”
