by Anne Malcom
I hadn’t wished to be a little lower. Ever.
Until now.
Just so I could escape this elevator.
Him.
“You assumed.”
I blinked. I wasn’t going to question him. He needed to elaborate, I wasn’t going to tolerate the clipped grunts that served as his version of conversation.
The numbers climbed.
The air thickened.
“You assumed that your workplace was safe,” he continued. “And when it comes to your safety, I’m not assuming shit. So I’ll be up there. I’ll assess. And then I’ll decide where I’m needed.”
I sucked in a breath. “That’s not how it works. You don’t decide. I sign your checks.”
“You want to keep signing my checks, you accept the fact when it comes to me, you don’t decide shit.”
The doors opened.
He strode out.
I was left staring at his back.
And it was a good back. Wide. Strong.
With a backbone to rival my own.
No one spoke to me like that.
Walked away from me.
Another firing offense.
“Are you gonna stand in the elevator all day?”
Vaughn’s manicured hands held the door open. He was regarding me with a raised brow and sparkling eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to get the full effect of the new hottie, our wolf,” he said, handing me a coffee as I walked out of the elevator.”
“He’s not our anything,” I said sharply as he fell into step with me.
“You’re right,” he agreed, sipping on his coffee. “He’s yours.”
The words hit me physically, but I didn’t slow my stride. “He’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not mine.”
I didn’t look at Vaughn because I wasn’t sure I could keep my expression cold if I did so. Instead, I walked into my office and slammed the door behind me.
I knew it was him the second my door opened and closed. And not just because Vaughn didn’t let anyone into my office without an appointment.
And because his energy hit me bodily.
I wasn’t a believer in that.
Energies.
A change to the air because of the people entering it.
I was a believer in what made sense.
But sense was the first casualty of his presence.
“You wanted to see me.” His voice was whisky. Aged. Dry. Perfect.
I didn’t look at him straight away. I took all the effort I could, and I finished the email I was sending to my uncle about calling off merger. It was important, considering I was losing the company billions in what the merger would earn us, and the board would have a lot to say over it. On paper, this deal was everything I’d worked myself toward. But in business, it was more than paper. Especially in my business. Especially when there were bloody fingerprints all over the proverbial paper.
The importance of the email wasn’t why I kept typing after he spoke. It was because he’d snatched the power I had in two interactions this morning. If I wanted to get honest, it was from the first night in that alley. I couldn’t have that. I wouldn’t have that. Power was my defining quality. It was what kept me together. I wasn’t going to let him tear me apart.
“Yes, I’ve got something I need you to sign,” I said, glancing up with a careful coldness. It was the fact I had to construct that chill was what concerned me. With everyone else apart from Molly and sometimes Vaughn, it was my default. Even to my reflection.
But with him, I had to force it. Pretend.
His eyes were intent on me, as I knew they had been since the second he entered the room. He held his body tight, coiled, ready to spring as if we were in the middle of a battlefield instead of my corner office in the most coveted building in Manhattan.
I pushed the paper across the desk. “I’m going to need you to sign this.”
He didn’t look at the paper, didn’t snatch it from the table. His eyes stayed on mine, as if he knew what his stare did to me. How it unraveled me, tugging on loose threads I’d been so sure I’d snipped off over the years.
“What is it?” he asked after the silence had yanked at those threads violently enough for me to dig my nails into my palms to keep my composure.
I should’ve told him to read it himself to find out. It’s what I would’ve done with anyone else. No, I wouldn’t have even had anyone else sitting here, handing them their contract myself. I never did that.
That’s what HR was for.
Though I approved every single contract for my employees.
They were much the same, stricter as the title got more important. As they were given more power and more responsibility.
But this was nothing like any of the others.
Because this man wasn’t like any of the others.
He wasn’t even a man.
Hence why I spoke. Because I was also terrified of what would happen when he read the contract. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt fear. Apart from that night in the alley.
Before then, I couldn’t call it up.
No, that was wrong. I could. The day after my sixteenth birthday was the last time I’d been really afraid. Since then, nothing.
You couldn’t be scared when your worst fear had already been realized before you had even graduated high school.
But I was scared now.
Of what would happen if he actually did read the contract I’d altered myself.
I’d taken a risk thinking he wouldn’t read it. I was so sure I’d collected enough information about him to conclude he wouldn’t read it. But there were no certainties with this man. I couldn’t figure him out like I did everyone else. So there was a chance he could read what I’d put in.
One of the biggest risks I’d ever taken since I invested everything I had in the company that put me in this office. If he read it, the fall would be so much more brutal than the forty-eight story drop.
“It’s a standard employment agreement,” I lied, my voice terse, even, professional.
His stare was not.
I dug my fingers in deeper.
“I think you’ll find the salary more than agreeable,” I continued. “Full insurance, benefits, of course. We offer an accommodation supplement, in addition to an option to live in one of the apartments in the building one of my companies owns.”
That last part was also a lie. We were generous, but I didn’t give anyone an apartment. Not even Vaughn, though he was paid enough to own his Pre-War on the Upper East side.
No one got a free apartment.
But he did.
I’d seen to it myself. High ceilings, converted loft, because I sensed he needed the space.
I sensed he needed somewhere to live.
Normally my employees didn’t matter to me as long as they did their jobs. New York was a tough city. It chewed you up and spit you out. That was the way of life. I wasn’t here to protect anyone. I didn’t want people who needed protecting working for me. That meant they were weak.
“There is also a confidentiality clause that prevents you from sharing anything that you experience during your employment here or once the contract is terminated,” I continued. “And I can do so within thirty day’s notice, as you will be able to do as well. Depending on the length of time, you’ll get paid out. It’s standard practice with everyone in the company, though slightly altered due to the...nature of our relationship.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “The nature of our relationship,” he repeated.
I nodded, sure I must’ve been breaking the skin of my palms at this point, though I felt no pain. In my palms at least. “Our working relationship, of course. As my protection detail, you’ll be working closely with me, hearing and seeing more than anyone else.”
His gaze darkened and the air thickened with an energy that spread warmth into my core. I struggled not to pant at the darkly erotic glint to his gaze. “Oh, I’ll be see
ing more than anyone else,” he repeated, the words soaking my panties. “And you’ll be sure I won’t be uttering a word.”
He reached forward for the pen I’d set beside the contract.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, my voice breaking out of its usual shackles. My soul breaking out of its usual shackles.
He paused the pen, glancing up at me. “I’m signing the contract.”
“Don’t you want to read it? Get a lawyer to look it over? It’s standard practice.”
Though it was, any lawyer with a community college degree would see that this was as far from a standard employment contract as one could get.
Jacob would see that in an instant.
He saw everything.
“What’s goin’ on here isn’t standard practice,” he all but growled. “And I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me that.” He scribbled on it, the pen moving violently across the page.
He straightened, gave me one more look and walked out the door.
My hand was shaking when I pulled the paper toward me.
6
“I don’t know why I let you make me come here to this hideous place,” Molly whined, glaring at her plate.
“This has two Michelin Stars,” I chided, sounding far too much how I imagined a chastising mother would sound. Not that I had experience. Our mother never chastised us. No, she would either pamper us when her world was soft and fluffy and devoid of responsibility. Or she’d completely ignore us as that world solidified, became too heavy for her to stand up with it on her shoulders. So she’d stay in bed. We’d tiptoe around her until she got out and made us chocolate cake for breakfast.
My father had been the disciplinarian, though he rarely did that since he doted on us and we didn’t break the rules.
Molly rolled her eyes, stabbing at a piece of tofu that was wrapped in seaweed. “A Michelin Star,” she mimicked. “Wow. Cool. Amazing. That makes it all okay to charge hundreds of dollars for four bites of food when I could have literally bought one hundred pizzas from my favorite joint in Brooklyn for this much.”
I sipped my wine. Then glared. Not just because the full-bodied red that cost enough to feed a family of four for a month wasn’t the sickly-sweet blend I was used to.
But because Molly was almost yelling she was drawing stares at the most intimate, impossible to get into and hideously expensive restaurant in New York. It was known that the more expensive the food, the softer one should speak while eating it.
Of course, Molly didn’t adhere to this.
I loved her for it.
Hence her seeing through the glare that I’d structured out of habit more than anything else.
She grinned at me. “You know you want cheese and carbs instead of this fancy shit. Admit it.”
I pursed my lips. “I will not.”
Her grin widened. “Come on. Admit it.”
I folded my arms. “You don’t even eat cheese,” I countered.
She lost her grin. “I do.”
“A mixture of chemicals designed to be disguised as cheese doesn’t count.”
She scowled down at her food and then back up at me. “It does when no animals were harmed in the making of it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, no animals, just the entire environment that suffers from the fumes coming from whatever factories they were produced in. That’s so much better.”
She continued to grin, her smile lighting up her entire face. Lighting up this entire dark and trendily lit room. It was something very simple, that smile. I envied it. That simple happiness that my sister had that made her so much more beautiful. That made me so much harsher because it was absent from my own, not so identical face. She had seen enough sorrow to turn her into...well, me. Yet she could smile a simple smile and feel that simple happiness from fresh paint or from a nice glass of wine. A stupid TV show or a good book.
People try and tie up the key to happiness in some complicated formula of mindfulness, or religion, or love, or any number of concepts. Yet what most people missed, that gave them a sentence of unhappiness until they figured it out, was how simple it was.
It was the mastery over simplicity that was the trick.
Then the smile left. “You gonna tell me yet?”
The abrupt change in her face and tone had me pausing my beef tartare halfway to my mouth. I made myself slowly chew and swallow before attempting to mask myself in front of the one person who saw through everything.
“Tell you what? That it was not appropriate to wear a ‘Meat is Murder’ crop top to an establishment that has a dress code?”
Thankfully, the waiters here knew exactly who I was, and barely fluttered an eyelash at my sister’s ensemble. Well, it only had to do with me in part. Mostly it was the fact my sister radiated a light that made even the snobbiest of waiters grin at her. She could get anyone eating out of the palm of her hand with her simple happiness.
“Ah, but I’m with you, oh great and powerful one. Codes and rules do not apply to the elite. Or, as it happens, the deplete, which I am.” She winked. “And no, you brought me here because you knew I’d be distracted by the snobby waiters, the stupid décor, the irritating food, and the entire principle of a place like this.” She waved her fork around. “You were hoping that the stupid lighting in here would mask what you are trying to hide from me.” She leaned forward on her elbows, despite the fact that elbows on a table were the height of bad manners. “When will you learn, Char Bear, that you can never hide from me? I’m the other half of you, remember?”
Her voice was soft, landing in that spot that I reserved for my sister. That tiny little area I hadn’t hardened completely.
“I’m not hiding anything,” I lied.
She raised her brow.
I feared she might push it.
I feared what would come of it if she did. Because I would never blink in front of some of the most powerful men in the world. Not when they tried to bring me down, not when they threatened my company, my reputation, and more recently, my life. But in front of my erratic, flaky and free-spirited sister’s kind gaze, I would crumble. I’d let out the events of the past two weeks and that would be it.
My weakness would be inescapable and all-consuming.
I’d be painting the air with the truth of it all. That fear that had burrowed into me since that night. Those eyes that haunted my dreams, my uninterrupted longing for that strange, violent and wild man.
Molly leaned back, picking up her utensils and shoving a bite of food into her mouth. “Fine,” she said, swallowing. “Tell me now, tell me later. It’ll come out. You can’t hide from me forever.”
I exhaled in relief.
But the truth of her words haunted me.
The man with the wolf eyes haunted me.
Until he was more than a ghost.
Until he came back.
Because wolves never left their prey.
“Where are you going?”
The voice was relatively flat and calm, considering it belonged to the man who had just ripped an earbud out of my ear, snatched my wrist and all but yanked me around to face him.
His grip wasn’t violent, exactly.
Well, it was.
But it wasn’t purposeful violence.
It was just...him.
My wrist protested at the firmness of his grip, but my soul cried out for more. Who was I kidding? The throbbing area between my legs cried out for more.
To lose control.
Or more accurately, let him hold onto it with the same ferocity as he was gripping my wrist.
My small pause at feasting on him in the dawn light was as close as I would come to ever relinquishing control. That sliver of a moment in the murky morning air.
I yanked my wrist back, he let it go without a struggle, folding his arms across his chest, the veins of his arms pulsating and defining his muscles as he did so.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I said, gesturing down to my body with a slightly shaking hand. “I’m going
for a run.” Muted sounds from my headphones floated into the air. I pressed pause on my phone more for something to do than anything else. “What are you doing outside my building at dawn?”
He didn’t speak for a beat, as if he knew that it would torture me. His eyes went slowly up and down my body, taking in my tight black leggings and long-sleeved compression top. His expression didn’t change as he did so, it stayed granite. But somehow my body responded to that cold gaze with an inferno. Like it would if he was devouring my naked body with his eyes.
“You got a gym inside that building, I assume?” he jerked his head to where I’d just come out of.
I folded my arms. “Yes, you assume right. But I prefer to run outside.”
“You’re not running outside today.”
I quirked my brow. “Excuse me?”
“Did I stutter?”
I narrowed my eyes. Could someone really be this broody before the sun had even come up? Then again, I was as sharp as I’d ever be, and I hadn’t even had coffee yet. It was for survival purposes more than anything. “We still haven’t addressed what you’re doing lurking outside my building over an hour before you need to be here,” I said, voice sharp.
“My job,” he said by answer.
I waited for more. No way was I breaking first. Not this time.
The silence lasted until the birds that could only be heard in a small sliver of time between five a. m. and sunrise started chirping. A truck rattled past on the street and New York replaced nature. The city was a living, breathing thing, highest up on the food chain, swallowing anything and everything beneath it.
Including human beings.
“Know that you’re already up and ready at six in the morning,” he continued, voice tight. “And know that you didn’t work out last night since you went to that dinner.” The dinner he accompanied me to, sitting at the bar to avoid questions from business associates. Obviously he didn’t come to the one I had with Molly. She didn’t need to know about him. Nor did anyone else. It wouldn’t do well for it to get out that I was needing to employ security. I was the face of my companies. If I was in trouble, if I couldn’t keep myself safe, people would think I was weak. That my companies were.