6

RUSLAN

“Are you going to punish me, Ruslan?”

Never have I wanted something so bad. My knuckles are white with tension as I grip the phone to my ear, hungry for every last moan and sigh and gasp that pops out of that dirty little mouth of hers.

My cock strains against the fabric of my pants, desperate to be freed. But I have a dozen men spread out across the upper floors of the chem facility and Kirill is walking towards the car, curiosity etched across his brow.

“Yes, sir. You’re right, sir. What did you have in mind?”

Jolts of electricity race through my core hearing her play out this little fantasy. I can only imagine what watching her would do to me.

In the eighteen months Ms. Carson has been working for me, I haven’t gotten so much as a hint of impropriety. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe that dig about her half-assed attempt at seducing me this morning unleashed the siren.

Or maybe this was a mistake. There’s a chance she’s unaware that she even sent me the voicemail. It is an unforgivable seven-and-a-half minutes long. And maybe thoughts of what I could do to her are just that distracting.

She groans deeply. Sounds of skin meeting skin. I can actually hear how wet she is.

“What’s going on?”

I rearrange my expression and pause the voicemail. “Nothing. I’ll have Boris drop you off first.”

Kirill arches a brow but he doesn’t push me as he clambers into the backseat. The surging possessiveness racing through me is not unfamiliar. I’m a possessive man and I don’t like sharing my things. But that rule has never really applied to women.

Placing ownership on any woman just gives her a claim over me. That’s been an inconvenience I’ve managed to avoid so far in my life. I’m not in any hurry to change things.

The whole way to Kirill’s place, my knee keeps bouncing impatiently.

“You sure you’re okay, brother?” he asks.

“Just preoccupied with the launch,” I lie easily.

The moment we drop Kirill off at the entrance to his apartment building, I have my phone back in my hand and I’m reopening Emma’s voice mail. I press play.

“Fuck me,” I mutter.

The woman puts on a show tailor-made for me. Every time she refers to me as “sir” in that soft whimper, my cock jumps needily. The little hitches in her breathing mirror my own.

By the time we get to my downtown penthouse, I’m wondering if my dick will ever go down. Not that I’ve made much of an attempt to help.

“Thanks, Boris. See you tomorrow at six.”

“Got it, boss.”

I take the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor after punching in my private access code. The doors open directly into my penthouse.

I’m a busy man, so it helps me to compartmentalize my life. That goes for my properties, too. Some are for business, others for pleasure—and this one on Madison Avenue, the grandest of my skyrise real estate, is just for me.

I come here when I’m craving peace and quiet, when I want to be completely alone with my thoughts.

Or with my assistant’s filthy fucking fantasies.

There’s no peace and quiet to be found here tonight. The only thing swimming around in my head is Ms. Carson. Her pert little mouth. Those innocent almond eyes. The way her ass moves when it’s sheathed in a silk dress.

I’m not blind—I noticed her the moment she stepped into my office for the final interview. Her attractiveness wasn’t the reason I hired her, though. In fact, I’d hired her despite her looks. No man needs to have constant temptation walking around in high heels and a red lip.

But her credentials and experience were all above board and I was sick of the revolving door of morons that darkened my doorstep with their ineptitude and emotional baggage. The assistant who preceded Emma quit, right before she burst into tears and called me a “psychopath in Hermes.” I had Kirill get that printed on my business cards.

So when Emma stepped into the role, despite a few freshman kinks, it was like a breath of fresh air. She was smart, competent, and she didn’t complain.

Not that I didn’t know exactly when she was pissed off or frustrated with me. Her blue eyes have this way of darkening and there is a vein in her forehead that twitches anytime I order her around or give her a task she considers beneath her.

It’s been my way of keeping her busy and far away—so that she didn’t end up beneath me.

Of course, now, I don’t have to imagine what she’d sound like if I were to pin her to the wall and run my fingers between her thighs.

I’ve listened to that damn voicemail twice already. Any more replays and I’m in danger of doing something stupid.

Like masturbating while I think about all the different ways I’d ravage her body.

Undressing, I walk to the leather recliner set up in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.. I manage to resist my phone for a full three minutes before picking it back up once again.

This time, when I start playing the voicemail, I put it on speaker.

Her moans fill what was supposed to be a blissful Zen silence. My cock braces against my pants, but I refuse to touch myself. I’m happy with the idea that I’m the star of her spank bank material, but I certainly don’t want her in mine.

But the way she cries out my name as she touches herself… Fucking hell, it’s the most erotic thing I’ve heard in my entire goddamn life. That and the sound of her fingers making contact with her pussy. The slippery wetness thrums just underneath her moans, getting faster and faster as she delves deeper into the fantasy.

“It sounds so fucking good, sir. Please do that. Please, please.”

“Blyat’!” I pause the voicemail mid-moan.

I need to fucking delete it. That’s the right move; I know that. But even as my finger hovers over the delete button, I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

I should fucking punish her for this. Impaling her on my cock seems like a pretty fitting punishment right about now.

I fast forward almost to the end of the message and press play again. She’s well past moaning now. She’s practically screaming. I can easily imagine her tight little body shuddering as the orgasm rips through her. It gives me a perverse sense of satisfaction to know that I’m responsible for that orgasm, no matter how indirectly.

Her breathing flutters a little and then it hitches up again just at the very end. A thump. A shocked gasp. Muffled static—then, two seconds later, the message ends.

I’m willing to bet that my prim and proper little secretary had no intention of sending me that voice message. Hell, she probably had no idea she even called me in the first place.

What an irreversible mistake.

I wonder what else that mouth is capable of.

Leaving my phone on the recliner, I head to the en suite bathroom in the master. I strip off my boxers and get into the shower, cranking the water as cold as possible. I force myself to freeze beneath the hailstorm for ten long minutes, until my erection finally gives up the fight and eases.

There’s no way I can avoid addressing this little slip-up tomorrow morning. Which leaves me with only two options: fire her or fuck her.

My cock likes the second option a little too much. “Down, boy,” I growl, unwilling to endure another fifteen-minute ice bath.

Ignoring my bed, I sit down at the sleek black desk. The light from my personal laptop illuminates the room with an eerie silver glow. A quick search is all it takes to find Emma’s file in my employee database. Her photo gleams at the top of the page. Innocent-looking. White blouse, red lipstick, a selfconscious smile.

But it’s impossible to look at her and see her the same way anymore.

Not when I know how it sounds when she comes undone.

Each file includes a full background check on all my employees. Everyone has skeletons in their closet; I just prefer to know how many before I put them on the payroll.

As it turns out, Emma Carson was practically a Girl Scout up until about three and a half years ago, when she abruptly inherited a ton of debt. I give the file a quick scan. The debt is innocent enough, just run-of-the-mill life bullshit. Mortgage. Student loans. Inflation. Funeral home. The kind of shit normal people have to deal with if they don’t have rich spouses or rich daddies.

But it gives me an idea.

After all, there’s nothing sexier than the air-tight boundaries of a mutually beneficial arrangement. It’s like Sergey’s lab—nothing can go wrong if you keep it contained. Bottle dangerous shit up in a test tube and it becomes a tool, a weapon, a product.

It’s when you let the chemistry explode on its own that shit goes wrong.

I pick up my phone once again and scroll through the contacts. My lawyer Isay’s voice is cracked with sleep when he picks up. “Boss?”

I don’t bother apologizing for waking him up. I pay my people enough to be able to demand twentyfour-hour attention whenever I need it.

“I need you to draw up a contract for me. Immediately.”