by Durand, Anna
Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by Anna Durand
Connect with Anna Durand
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Elena
I am cursed. Seriously. Since I was born on the thirteenth day of October---Friday the thirteenth, no less---I feel justified in declaring myself to be cursed. Why else would I get my dream job only to discover it's a nightmare? I've admired Raisa Volkov for years and followed her legal career like a true fangirl. Becoming her paralegal seemed like an awesome gift. I get to work alongside the toughest, most successful divorce attorney in New York.
Except she's hated me from day one. She snips at me, snaps at me, barks orders at me, and generally makes me wish I'd taken a job at McDonald's instead. I suppose I should be comforted by the fact she makes everyone feel that way, but it doesn't comfort me at all.
And this is only day two. Thank God it's Friday.
Now I understand why Raisa's former paralegal, Mia, gave her two-week notice sixteen days ago. Her Royal Snippiness tasked Mia with hiring her own replacement.
That would be me. The cursed Elena Linwood.
While I fantasize about murdering my new boss, I raise a hand to get the bartender's attention. I just sat down at the bar a minute ago and desperately need booze. I mean desperately. Two days with Raisa have left me drained and depressed. So here I sit, in the swanky hotel across the street from the office, on a Friday night, about to drown my sorrows in a margarita. The bartender takes my order, smiling and calling me "babe," though not in a creepy way. He's cute and sexy, but way too busy to flirt with me. "Sure thing, babe" is all I get out of him.
God, I need a hot guy to flirt with. To dance with. To do all sorts of naughty, naughty things with.
That proverbial light bulb goes off in my head. A bright, flashing, neon-pink bulb. What do I need to lift my spirits? Why, a steamy fling with an anonymous piece of sizzling-hot ass.
You're brilliant, Elena.
I congratulate myself on my awesome idea for about thirty seconds. Then reality slams down on my head as I glance around the bar. It's full of older couples and middle-aged men on their own who look like they probably just got served divorce papers and want to get hammered. I have a feeling a lot of men who get served by Raisa Volkov wind up in this bar after their first meeting with their wives' attorney.
No hot prospects. Looking at these guys makes me want to face-plant on the bar.
So I do. And I moan, like the pathetic wage slave I am.
"You still want the drink?" the bartender asks.
I don't bother to raise my head, instead waving my hand to indicate that yes, I do want that margarita. I plan to guzzle it like a sorority girl at a frat party. As soon as I can peel my face away from the shiny, cool surface of the bar. I hear the cute bartender set my drink down.
Maybe I should've ordered straight-up tequila.
"Are you all right there?"
That voice. It's not the cute bartender. The man who spoke to me has a silky British accent and a husky voice that makes me want to crawl onto his lap without even looking at his face. Since I am cursed, I know if I do look, I'll find out he has the face of a bulldog and the body of a sumo wrestler.
But that voice...
A warm hand touches my arm. Since I'm wearing a sleeveless blouse, I get to feel his skin on mine. Oh, it feels sooo good.
"I said are you all right?" he asks.
"Mm-hm." I finally peel my face away from the bar---and sit up straighter. Blue eyes. Blond hair. A body to die for. Lucky me. Everything south of my waist wakes up from its months-long coma and tingles in all the right ways when he smiles at me. I smile back. "I'm fine, but thanks for asking. I love polite British men."
Why did I say that? Stupid, stupid Elena.
He lifts one brow and smirks. "How do you know I'm polite? I've barely spoken five words to you."
"Seven, actually. Unless you count the ones you said twice, which would mean eleven words. Not including what you said a second ago."
Oh. My. God. Why do stupid things keep pouring out of my mouth? It's not like I've never seen a hot guy before.
He leans against the bar, his beautiful blue eyes twinkling in the subdued lighting. "It's comforting to know you're intelligent enough to count to at least eleven."
"I can count to twelve in German."
"Can you?" He's still smirking, but damn, that expression makes me start to tingle above the waist too. His voice gets even deeper, even sexier, when he says, "Let me hear it."
What the hell. I slant toward him a little, enough that I can smell his spicy cologne, or maybe it's aftershave. Either way, the scent makes me want to lick him from head to toe. "Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf."
"Say zwölf again. I love the way you pronounce it."
He loves my pronunciation? I really hope he isn't making fun of me.
The sexy Brit leans in to brush hair away from my face, his fingers grazing my skin. "Say it again, please."
I grin. "See, you are polite."
"For the moment." He trails his fingertips down my cheek to the corner of my mouth. "Say zwölf again, and I'll kiss you."
"What if I don't want to kiss you?"
He drags one finger across my mouth, slowly, sensuously. "You do."
Yeah, okay, I do. My fling idea sounds better and better every second.
I lick his finger and say, "Zwölf."
He slides his hand into my hair, pulls my face closer, and kisses me.
Oh God, his lips. They're soft and warm, and taste faintly of caramel. Maybe he had a decadent dessert a few minutes ago. I don't care, because all I want is for his lips to tease mine for the rest of eternity. His breaths tickle my skin, and my nipples go hard. When he slips his tongue between my lips, I melt. I'm floating on a warm, silken cloud of desire, my body pure liquid and the only thing keeping me from collapsing into a puddle at his feet is his mouth.
He pulls away, but only a few inches. "Come to my room with me."
"What?" Sure, it's exactly what I wanted, but my brain can't quite catch up to his words.
"Come with me, upstairs, to my room." He catches my bottom lip with his teeth, swipes his tongue over it, and releases my flesh with a slowness that makes me ache in all the best ways. "You're the most adorable creature I've ever seen, and I want to make love to you all night long."
"Oh God, yes." Did I say that out loud? Ugh, Elena, stop doing that. "Let's go to your room."
"Do you want to finish your drink first?"
I glance sideways at the untouched margarita. Suddenly, my scorching Brit sounds like a much better cocktail than the drink I ordered. "No, I'm done with it."
He slings an arm around my waist as I ooze off my stool, slinging my too-big purse over my shoulder. We walk across the lobby to the elevator with me hugged to his hard body and his hand on my hip.
The elevator doors open. Three people hurry out, leaving the car empty.
My Brit and I get in, and the doors glide shut.
He turns toward me, still hugging me to him, and I suddenly find myself plastered to the hottest body I've ever seen---and the
stiffest hard-on I've ever felt.
"Can't wait," he almost growls. "I'm on the nineteenth floor, which means we have time."
"Time for what?"
He backs me up to the wall and crushes his mouth to mine. His tongue thrusts deep, making me moan and latch my arms around his neck. I'm helpless to resist his hungry swipes, helpless to do anything except let him ravage me and mash me to the wall with every inch of his delicious body. I moan again, rougher, needier.
And he shoves my skirt up.
I gasp, but then grin like an idiot. My purse slides off my shoulder, thumping on the floor.
He tears my panties off, his expression tight with need and a craving so intense it seems to bleed into me, making me slicker and hotter and achier. He unzips his slacks while he seals his mouth over my nipple, soaking my blouse and bra, and suckles the tip. My back arches. I clutch his head to my chest, loving the softness of his hair and the sharp sting of his teeth scraping my hard peak.
I barely notice when the sound of foil ripping fills the elevator.
My Brit pulls away only long enough to sheath himself with a condom, then he hoists one of my legs and thrusts into me.
A cry bursts out of me, surprise and lust and sheer ecstasy rushing through me like high tide on a full moon night.
He pushes inside me again and again, every thrust strong and purposeful, his cock penetrating me so deeply it's like our bodies were made for each other. He consumes me, unrelenting in his passion, and soon his movements grow wilder, greedier, like he can't get enough of me and never wants this to end. I want it to go on and on and on. The slapping of our bodies as they collide becomes a frantic rhythm, while I bounce and he grunts every time he slams me into the wall.
I come like a fireworks display on New Year's Eve, every burst of pleasure bigger and hotter and brighter, blinding me to everything except the look on his face. No man has ever looked at me that way, like he can't bear to give up being inside me but can't wait a second longer to let go.
His climax pulsates deep inside me, and I come harder.
We both go limp. I sag against the wall. Luckily, he has enough strength left to keep us both from falling into a lump on the floor. He nuzzles my neck, then peppers soft kisses on my skin as he makes his way up to my ear.
A phone rings.
Not mine.
My Brit digs his phone out of his pocket and answers it. "What do you want?"
He sounds irritated.
I'm kind of irritated too. I mean, he's still inside me, and he takes a call? What the hell? So much for politeness.
"I'm busy," he says curtly, his mouth pinched. "We can talk about this Monday."
While he chats with somebody else, I wriggle away from him, fix my dress, and stuff my wrecked panties into my purse.
The elevator stops. The doors open.
I don't have a room on the nineteenth floor, or anywhere in this hotel, but I suddenly need to get away from him. My plan to cheer myself up with a fling started out so hot, but now I'm feeling weird about the whole thing. So I stumble out into the hall.
"Wait," he calls out to me.
I turn toward him, hoping my expression conveys how much I don't like being screwed and then forgotten about.
He's holding his phone to his chest and giving me the sweetest look of regret. "Please wait. I'm sorry about this."
Being a total sucker for a pitiful, hot man---not to mention a sucker for a British accent---I chew my lip and try to decide what to do. I can hear the person he's been talking to shouting at him, demanding his attention.
"Not now," he hisses into the phone.
I hear more tinny shouting. My shoulders sag, because obviously, this is the end of my hot night of sin with a stranger. Like I said, I'm cursed. I get one good bang in an elevator, and then it's over.
He looks at me again, his expression pleading for me to stay.
I shake my head and march toward the stairs. I do my dramatic exit thing, then schlep down one flight of stairs before I realize I can't walk down eighteen more flights. Groaning at my sucky luck, I sit down on the steps and face-plant in my own hands this time.
The clapping of shoes echoes in the stairwell, coming down the steps from the floor above.
Someone sighs right beside me.
I peek through my fingers at the person.
My sexy Brit is kneeling beside me, looking a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't have answered my phone."
A shrug is all I can manage in response. I'm still covering my face with my hands and watching through the gaps between my fingers.
He gently pries my hands away, clasping them in his bigger ones. "Please come to my room. I'd love to spend all night with you. You're the most enchanting woman I've ever met."
Enchanting? No one has ever called me that before. He'd also said I'm adorable. He is definitely adorable, enchanting, sexy, beautiful, and all sorts of other adjectives.
I open my mouth to accept his offer when my phone chimes, alerting me to a new text. Since I got annoyed when my Brit took a call, I can't check my text. I clutch my purse to my stomach, chewing on my lip.
"You can check that," he says. "It's all right."
"Sorry," I say as I pull out my phone and read the text.
It's from my brother, Kyle. He says, "Where R U?"
Oh crap. I forgot I'm supposed to spend the evening with him, hanging out, before he and his girlfriend leave for their spring break vacation tomorrow morning.
"You need to go," my Brit says.
Wincing, I say, "Yeah. It's, um, a family thing I forgot about."
"May I know your name?"
"Elena." I get an idea, and rummage in my purse until I find an old Starbucks receipt and a pen. I scribble numbers on the back, then hand the paper to him. "Here's my number."
He smiles. "Thank you, Elena. I'm Chance, by the way."
The man I just had sex with is called Chance. Maybe my luck is changing. I try not to read too much into his name, since chance is a roll of the dice, not a good omen.
We both get up.
He kisses my cheek. "I'll ring you tomorrow, if that's all right."
"Yes, I'd like that."
I allow myself one last look at his blue eyes, then I walk out of the stairwell and take the elevator to the lobby. When I get home, Kyle is waiting for me with two pizzas and a six-pack of beer. We have fun watching action movies until two o'clock, but when I fall asleep, I dream of the sexy Brit.
Will he call me?
As it turns out, no. My luck hasn't changed at all.
Chapter Two
Elena
I arrive at the offices of Raisa Volkov & Associates on Monday morning feeling surprisingly good, despite having spent the weekend at the office working overtime without the overtime pay. This is the life of a paralegal. I no longer feel like a loser who had a quickie in an elevator and never got a callback. Definitely not like the girl who had face-planted on the bar, or the girl who counted to twelve in German. No, I'd left that idiot behind. Locked her in the hotel basement, actually.
Still, my sexy Brit had liked the silly things I'd said. At least, he seemed to like them. Maybe he was pretending to, so I'd have sex with him. Whatever. I'd wanted a fling, and I'd had one. Yay, me.
I sit down at my desk in the cubicle zone and resolve to never think of Friday night again. My large, steaming latte from Starbucks calls to me, so I take a swig. Mm, yummy goodness.
A memory of the sexy Brit's face pops into my mind. Oh yeah, yummy goodness there.
Stop that, I command myself. You're a strong, capable woman who has a freaking job to do.
Yes, I do. My job sucks in every way imaginable, but I will do it anyway. Straightening in my chair, I take another sip of my latte and log on to my computer. Like the other paralegals and the interns, I have a crummy chair inside a crummy cubicle. My coworkers named all of us the plebs, a term taken from ancient Rome, w
hich means we're the dirt Empress Raisa scrapes off her shoes. Other attorneys work here, but she has no partners. That would give somebody else a measure of control and a financial stake in the firm. Raisa Volkov does not share authority.
The most annoying part of all is that I still admire her. She built this firm from the ground up and made a name for herself, not only in New York, but around the country.
Yeah, I'm a pathetic fangirl.
"Elena!"
Oh great. Her Royal Highness is summoning me. I rotate my chair toward her office door and smile politely. "Good morning, Raisa. What can I do for you?"
"Why don't I have the Caldwell case file? Someone didn't put it on my desk this morning."
"Someone" hadn't gotten out the file because another someone hadn't said she needed it.
Raisa jabs a finger in the air in my general direction. "Go get it."
Naturally, the most obnoxious woman in New York looks like a supermodel. She has long legs and a slender body, with ebony hair that glistens beautifully and skin that glows even in lighting conditions that make me look sallow. According to the male interns, her dark eyes lend her an aura of mystery.
She storms up to me dressed in her Armani pantsuit, towering over me in a way that makes me feel like a munchkin, and taps one finger on my desk. "Why aren't you getting that file? Go. Now."
"Yes, Raisa. Right away."
I scurry off to the file room and retrieve the documents she wants. Everything is on the firm's servers, but lawyers seem to have a weird aversion to looking at files on their computers. They even take notes on pads of paper, instead of digital tablets. That leaves us paralegals and interns to brave the dusty, windowless file room to get whatever the attorneys need.
At least the maze of cubicles where we all work gets some sunlight, even if it's secondhand. The attorneys' offices rim the cubicle zone, and every office has large windows. The glass walls can be turned opaque by flipping a switch, but most of the time they're clear, giving the grunt workers a touch of natural light.
When I get back to my desk, I see Raisa's office door is shut. I swig my cold coffee, then approach her door. Just as I raise my hand to knock, the door swings inward.
"There you are," Raisa says, like she's been waiting hours for me to come back. It's been ten minutes. She snatches the file out of my hand. "Get in here. We need to talk."