Chapter Two

6 am.

I was standing in my boss’s office, shivering a little. It was one of those overly chilly fall mornings and it didn’t help that my boss had cranked up the AC to the coldest. If that wasn’t confirmation that this man was weird, I didn’t know what was. 

I stared at him as he worked, ignoring my presence. Why did he command me to come to his office at 6 am when he was just going to keep me standing and staring at him while he did whatever he was doing on his computer? 

As if he had read my thoughts, Dimitri looked up at me. Staring into this man’s eyes was always a heady experience for me. No matter how he treated me, I couldn’t deny that he had a weird appeal. I fought the urge to look away as he scrutinized me. He stared at me for a short while before speaking.

“You didn’t change the scent like I asked you to,” he said, his voice soft. 

I shivered a little, and this time around, it was not because of the cold. I felt like his voice being that soft was deceptive. He had never spoken to me in that way. And I don’t know if he was being harsh to keep me in line or something but to hear him speak to me calmly and without raising his voice was surprising.

So I stumbled on my words while I spoke. “Uhm, sir… I… yesterday we finished a little late and I was tired, so I headed home.”

I didn’t know why I was this nervous. One thing I had remarked about my boss was that this man preyed on weakness. I wasn’t supposed to show him I was nervous. And in the months I had worked with him, I had perfected the art of taking him head on without sounding disrespectful. It had worked for me so far.

I frowned a little as his nostrils flared. Was this man alright?

“Leave,” he said. His voice was chilly, even more chilly than the outside air. 

“Sir?” I asked, a little worried. Was this normal? 

“I said leave!” he shouted, then he hit his hands on his table.

I rushed out of his office, my heart beating fast and very loud. I had never seen him like that. Sure he had been abrasive, but he had never demonstrated this level of anger. I didn’t know what to make of it, I didn’t know how to take it. I sat there, wondering what to do. I couldn’t leave, that much was for sure. But was I just to sit around until he decided that he was no longer in an unrepentant mood? I was so uncomfortable.

I sighed and placed my head on the table. If I had known that my fragrance would cause such a reaction, I would have changed it. Was he allergic to it or something? Was that why he was so mad at me? I started feeling bad. I had thought I was just being “rebellious” and that I needed to show him that he could not control me. But boy, it seemed like I had dug myself a deeper hole.

The intercom beeped and gave me a little start; I jumped and stared at it. 

“Willow, get in here.”

I swallowed and stood. I was nervous. I couldn’t lie. I was very nervous. I had not sat on my desk for more than half an hour but the scenarios that had gone through my head were terrible. Scenes of how he called me into his office and told me I was fired. Man. Imagine that. Imagine being fired because of something I could have changed so easily.

Fragrance?

I had many more bottles of perfume home. Wearing this one was me being stubborn. And boy, how I regretted it now. No matter how scared I was though, I took in a deep breath, knocked a little on his office door and got into his office. I advanced towards him warily, his eyes on me giving the impression that he was a predator. I swallowed.

“Sir? You called?”

“Place an order for some other stronger scent. I’ll try to control myself while we wait for it to arrive.” The last bit was mumbled but it got me confused. 

I’ll try to control myself. What did he mean by that? I was sure there was a frown on my face but I smoothened it out, trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He could have fired me. After all, I had gone against a direct order coming from him. I muttered a small okay and sat where I usually did so we could finish up the work together.

I spent about two hours there, sitting next to him. After I had called Kendra and asked her to bring a stronger scent for me of course. It was so awkward. I was sitting there, trying to behave as normally as I possibly could. And I noticed how Dimitri was flexing his hands. Usually, he wasn’t that fidgety. And his eyes were never that red. It seemed like what he said about control was actually true. It seemed like he was truly trying not to lose hold of his control.

I didn’t know what would happen if he did. But I had no desire to find out. Despite the awkward atmosphere, we managed to work well together, completing the work in record time. By the time I stood from the chair, it was 9 am. Time had passed so quickly. And I kind of felt bereft when it was time for me to go back to my desk. I enjoyed working with this man.

Yes, he was abrasive. Yes, he had been nothing but an ass to me since I started working with him. But I took his attitude as a challenge. I was bound not to let it affect me. I was probably going to have to face people worse than him in the future. So this was building up my tolerance. Plus, he was one of the best in the world of business. I had a lot to learn from him. If one of the consequences of learning from him was his surliness, then I was ready to bear it.

“Willow,” Dimitri said as I was walking out of the office. His voice was uncharacteristically soft and I stiffened. This was the second time he was calling my name like this and I wasn’t too sure if I appreciated it.

It was making me feel things I had no business feeling. I turned towards my boss and what I saw on his face had me feeling confused. There was a hunger in his stare, a longing. Emotions that he masked very quickly. But it didn’t change the fact that they had been there. Longing… longing for me? Hunger for me?

I decided not to linger on it too much. I was going to go mad. There was no point thinking about it too much. He was my boss. There was nothing there. And left to him, there would never be anything there. Left to me as well. I had no desire to lose this well-paying job with all the amazing perks because of a few minutes of pleasure. I was good on that.

“Get yourself breakfast,” he said.

I frowned a little. “Yes sir… I will.”

“You can leave now,” he dismissed me in his usual manner then stared at the computer in front of him. 

Okay now I was really confused. Dimitri Rustanov was asking me to get breakfast? My boss had just told me to get breakfast. It might not seem like a big deal but it was! We had had so many of these six am sessions and some had even been longer than two hours thirty minutes. But my well-being had never been my boss’s interest. It didn’t matter to him whether I had eaten breakfast or whether I was dying and weak because of hunger. This was the first time.

His behavior was so weird. But again, I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. I spied my phone and saw a message from Kendra telling me she was downstairs so I picked up my phone and my purse and headed downstairs. I could not wait for whatever weird theory she was going to come up with. Before I got into the elevator, I stopped. My boss had been nice enough to free me so I could get breakfast. It would be rude not to ask what he wanted.

So I went back towards his office and knocked. Then I opened the door and got in. Dimitri was leaning back in his chair and when I got in, his eyes snapped open. For one second, they were red. Then they became normal. I frowned. What the hell was that? Had I just imagined that? No human being on his earth had red eyes. Who was this man? 

“What do you need?” His voice was gruff. Ah. Back to default setting.

“I wanted to ask you if you needed anything, sir,” I asked softly, trying not to provoke the beast.

“The only thing I need is for you to change that godforsaken scent,” was all he said, then he closed his eyes and leaned his head on his hands.

I was a little hurt. I wasn’t supposed to be. I mean, I thought I was already used to his words and how hurtful they could be. I definitely wasn’t as desensitized as I thought I was. Ha. So much for trying to be nice.

I left the office and closed the door softly behind me. I didn’t want to bang it and provoke his ire even more. I didn’t need this. I went downstairs like I had planned to do and there at the reception was Kendra. I smiled. I loved her so much that just seeing her lifted my mood so much. 

“Why do you have your purse with you?” she asked after we had hugged each other.

“My boss permitted me to get breakfast,” I said drily.

“I sense there’s more to this story.”

I didn’t answer. I waited until we were strapped in her car then I sighed. “There’s a lot more. Just take me where I can get food and I’ll you everything.”

In less than ten minutes, we were sitting in a small diner. It looked promising and the aromas I was getting were making me even hungrier. 

“Spill, what happened?” Kendra asked, staring at me intently.

“Do you know of anyone that can change their eye color at will? Like from brown to red then from red back to brown?” I asked out of the blue, before even delving into the story.

Kendra’s reaction was weird. She sat there calmly and it seemed she was stilling her entire body so as not to let anything show on her face. I frowned. This was not how I expected her to react when I asked her that question.

“Don’t be absurd, babes. You know there’s no such thing as a human with red eyes, much less a human that can change his eye color at will,” Kendra admonished with a wave of her hand.

I felt a little offended. “I’m not stupid, Kendra. I am aware of all this. But I know what I saw!”

“What happened before then?”

I explained everything to her, from the time I got into the office and he screamed about my scent to when I went to ask him about breakfast. Kendra listened intently and I made sure to get all of her reactions. Because she was being weird that day.

“I still think you imagined the red eye thing,” she insisted.

I sighed and looked away. I knew that the thing about red eyes didn’t sound plausible at all but it still hurt that she didn’t believe me. It made me feel a little stupid. I faked a little smile and dug into the food the waiter had placed in front of me. And I felt someone touch my hand.

“Babes,” she started with a sigh, “I’m not implying you’re stupid. Far from that. I just think that your mind and the lighting played tricks on you. Because we both know someone with red eyes is ridiculous.”

Kendra was right. “Right,” I said with a sigh.

She rubbed my hand and smiled. “You see now that you were building stories in your head about Dimitri hating you and thinking you smell bad? I still think he’s hung up on you and he knows it will never work because he is your boss.”

I looked away. I hated that Kendra was telling me all of this because it was just helping to put stupid ideas in my head. I didn’t need this. I didn’t need to think that my boss had more feelings for me other than exasperation. I wasn’t even going to entertain Kendra’s train of thought. It was going to bring me heartache for nothing.