doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  I sank my nails into my palms and held my breath.

  Never had I had to do physical things like this in order to control myself. Compose myself. Self-control and composure were two things that were as easy as breathing with me. But when Jacob was around, mere inhaling and exhaling evenly was an effort.

  It wouldn’t do.

  I had to fire him.

  The doors opened, revealing my stark and empty penthouse. It was a human thing, staring at me, taunting me with the solitude it offered.

  I was frozen in my spot for two seconds. That’s all it was—I counted. But it was two seconds where I literally didn’t have control, of myself, all of that was yielded to the man beside me, holding me still with nothing but his mere presence.

  I regained control after those two seconds that should never have been anyone’s but mine.

  I needed to fire him. Right now.

  “Goodnight, Jacob,” I said, my voice almost a sigh.

  I walked out of the elevator and prided myself on the fact I didn’t look back at him,

  “Boots?”

  I instantly turned.

  Well, there went all my upper hand.

  His face had changed since the last time I looked at it. It hit me physically, the hunger in his gaze. Not human hunger. Brutal, animal hunger. “You look fucking magnificent.”

  I blinked rapidly, digesting the words. And by the time I opened my mouth to respond, the elevator doors were closing.

  8

  One Week Later

  I knew who was knocking at the door the second the pounding started.

  I’d been waiting for it.

  “Happy birthday!” Molly screamed the second I opened the door. Then she looked me up and down and scowled. “How are you dressed? It’s not even six in the morning. I’m only dressed because I haven’t been to sleep yet. I was planning on this being the one birthday I wake you up.”

  I smiled, taking in my sister’s slightly too bright eyes, her sequined dress with a chunky knit thrown over the top of it and thigh high lace up boots. Only she could pull this off and look amazing. I did worry about that glint in her eye, knowing it didn’t come from cocktails since she barely drank. She was more about saying no to vodka and yes to cocaine. Cocaine was more common than coffee the higher you got to the top, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t jaded to the drug. I didn’t believe in drugs because I was terrified of anything that would take control of my thoughts. There was already a disease lurking in my genes which threatened to do that to me. Almost every CEO needed to take something, it wasn’t natural to work the amount we did. The amount I did. Though I didn’t need a drug since it was a matter of survival in my eyes.

  I worried about Molly, but she had been a party girl since forever, and she somehow found excess in everything but drug use.

  “Well, you needed to get here at four-thirty. I’ve had my workout and two conference calls already,” I told her.

  “Four-thirty?” she repeated. “No one gets up that early. Not even the sun.”

  I smiled again. “The sun’s always up somewhere.”

  She tilted her head to regard me. “Touché, and strangely sweet for you.”

  I opened the door fully and let her burst in. “It’s not sweet, it’s science.”

  She waved her hand, well, the coffee cup that she was holding. Obviously she had decided to switch stimulants, likely in preparation for seeing her slightly older, more judgmental and less fun sister.

  I closed the door and followed her into the apartment. My thighs burned slightly underneath my silk slacks. Jacob and I had gone faster and further than our usual. And our usual was already six miles.

  I’d needed more today.

  People—my sister included—who believed in the supernatural thought the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest at Halloween.

  I didn’t believe in the supernatural.

  But my birthday worked somewhat like that for memories of death. For ghosts and demons that didn’t live in some otherworld, but within me. This day made the veil between my memories and the present almost nonexistent. So I ran hard. Fast. As if I could escape them.

  If I couldn’t escape them, I could distract myself with the burn in my thighs, the tightness in my chest, the constant thump of Jacob’s shoes against the ground.

  I used to run with music. I had to. Ear-splitting rock, the lower brow, the better. I didn’t need to hear the ground crunching beneath my feet, didn’t need to hear my only slightly labored inhales and exhales. I just needed noise.

  But since Jacob and I had started running, I’d needed the crunch of the ground beneath his feet, his steady inhales and exhales.

  I needed him.

  It was bad. Sick. Dangerous. But I didn’t stop.

  We hadn’t spoken about the extra distance today. He didn’t ask. He was Jacob. He just did what he always did, he walked me into my building. Usually he’d go to the gym complex—I’d gotten him a locker and access to full facilities, but since I’d informed him I was going into work late today, he didn’t need to be immediately ready. I imagined he was going home. Wherever home was. He still hadn’t moved into the apartment. I still had enough self-control not to ask him why, though the question was burning at the back of my throat like some kind of emotional acid reflux. I needed relief. I didn’t give in.

  Yet

  Jacob had been with me for a month, he knew my schedule, likely he’d burned it into his brain by his second day. Ditto with my qualities. He almost certainly knew that me going into the office late was highly out of the ordinary.

  Yet he didn’t ask questions.

  I wondered if it was because of the same reason as me. If he wanted to know, but he knew that asking questions would disrupt the power struggle between us. It would be giving in to me somehow.

  Or the more likely explanation was that he didn’t care.

  The pop of a wine bottle jerked me out of that uncomfortable thought.

  I walked into the kitchen and took the glass of pink wine that Molly had poured for us.

  She grinned, holding up her glass. “To us, being another year older. You being another year wiser and me being...”

  “You,” I finished for her.

  She smiled wider and clinked her glass to mine.

  I tasted the sweet liquid, but it turned bitter with the memories. The last day we’d had with our mother being...whatever was left of herself. The last day we had when our father was alive. Where he’d come home from work with a novel about the most successful women in business for me and a record player for Molly. Where he’d smiled with true happiness, kissed our heads, danced with my mother and lit the candles on our cake.

  Molly loved tradition, and somehow extracted the sweet from the bitter, the happy from the terrible in order to continue it. That was the way Molly lived her life in general, I lived mine with the truth, always bitter and terrible.

  It made Molly happy to do this, which was why I did it. Why I drank the pink wine at six in the morning, gritted my teeth from the sugar and the memories. It’s not like it made me more miserable. I’d have the memories whether I started my birthday with the physical reminder of them or not.

  She regarded me over her glass, then she glanced around my kitchen, looking for something. “I didn’t expect you to be alone,” she said, putting her glass down.

  “Why? I’m always alone in the mornings.”

  She raised her brow. “But that was before Jacob. He is not a man that leaves you alone in the mornings.”

  I knew she saw too much, despite the fact she’d been silent on the topic of Jacob since the charity event.

  “You know my rules when it comes to men, Molly. They don’t stay over,” I said, taking another sip of the sweet wine and bitter memories if only to escape the taste of Jacob’s name in the air.

  “I know that’s a man that breaks every rule in the book. Even yours,” she countered.

  “Don’t put anything into Jacob and me,” I ordered, my
voice harsher than intended. “We’re temporary.”

  She pursed her lips. “Nothing about that man is temporary.”

  She was right. The ghost of him was already haunting me and he hadn’t even left yet.

  Another thing to put on the list of reasons why I should fire him.

  Another thing to put on the list of reasons of how he was destroying me, even with the reality of how temporary he was, all I knew was the permanence of what he’d done to me.

  What he was still doing to me.

  I left Molly at my apartment with the rest of the bottle of the wine, Netflix and a promise she would take a nap before she met her friends for lunch later on in the day.

  I doubted she would. If Molly and I had one thing in common, apart from our eyes, it was our lack of sleep. She just snatched her few hours when I was getting up from mine.

  All of my employees knew the drill in regards to my birthday—that was to not so much as acknowledge it unless they wanted to be fired.

  I had fired three different staff members for doing just that. It promoted too much familiarity, sent the wrong message, and there was probably the small dark part of me that was slightly unhinged at this time of the year.

  But if I made the rules, I expected employees to follow them, and if they didn’t follow the little ones, it didn’t bode well for the larger ones.

  Therefore, Ralph gave me his usual greeting as I met him in the car, maybe with more of a twinkle in his eye as he said, “Good Morning, Ms. Crofton.”

  “Good morning, Ralph,” I nodded, with no twinkle in my eye.

  Jacob didn’t speak, he just slid into the back seat, where he always sat now, despite his knowledge of my discomfort over the fact.

  And my discomfort came from the very comfort of his presence. I was only now just able to concentrate on my morning emails and contracts without my brain being clouded by his proximity.

  I was thankful he didn’t know what today was, though Jacob didn’t strike me as a man that would make a big deal over such things.

  I managed all the way up to the offices in silence, though that too had become the norm.

  Vaughn handed me a coffee. Different than my regular black with an extra shot. I knew this because it was covered in whip cream and syrup. The one allowance I made for him having any kind of statement on this day as it was “a criminal offense to have a birthday without some kind of refined sugar.”

  He smirked at me, daring me to say something, as his gaze flickered to Jacob. He knew Jacob, and he likely knew that Jacob noticed every minute detail, likely that I had gotten the exact same coffee from Vaughn for the entire time he was working here, and today, for no obvious reason I was getting a different one.

  He didn’t comment.

  Nor did I.

  “I’ve got a meeting with China in fifteen minutes, prep the conference room and make sure that Adams is actually versed on how to exchange pleasantries in Mandarin,” I said, taking the coffee. “I will not have another disaster like last time. Oh, and confirm my two o’clock.”

  Vaughn raised his brow. “Are you sure you want to take that meeting today?”

  I raised my own. “I just said to confirm it, so obviously I’m sure,” I said, voice sharp.

  He nodded once.

  I strode into my office.

  Jacob didn’t follow me. He walked me to my office every morning, to Vaughn’s absolute glee, and then he left to parts unknown.

  The door opened and closed. I didn’t need to look up to know who it was.

  I pretended to busy myself with the last of my contracts, steeling myself from his gaze. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but I did feel delicate today of all days. Not just in general, but with Jacob. As if he had this ability to not only live through and create horror but see my own too.

  That didn’t make sense.

  But it was true to me nonetheless.

  I didn’t expect him to speak, I knew he was here to escort me to my meeting, as he did with all of my meetings, though he usually waited in the car. But it was impossible to establish a pattern of behavior with Jacob.

  “Happy birthday,” he murmured, soft voice the same as a yell in my quiet office.

  I jerked my head up and blinked in surprise. Not of his knowledge, but his acknowledgment. “I wouldn’t consider you to be much of a birthday person.” I forced my tone to flatten.

  “I’m not,” he said. “But this is the anniversary of the day you came into the world. It deserves recognition.”

  I wasn’t just blinking in surprise anymore. I was gaping. Just this morning, I had been torturing myself with the idea that Jacob’s surface indifference toward me ran all the way to the bottom. And then he says something like that.

  His words ran all the way to the bottom of me.

  To my core.

  I sucked in a ragged breath.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  My head jerked up and my gaze landed on Vaughn. I didn’t scuttle back, nor change my expression. “Not at all.”

  I could feel Jacob’s stare.

  I ignored it.

  As well as the way every single nerve ending in my body was electrified, crying out for him.

  Vaughn grinned. “Your meeting with Ethan Kershaw is in twenty minutes. The car will be ready in five.”

  I nodded once. “I’ll be there.”

  Vaughn didn’t say another word as he walked out and closed the door.

  At the moment Kershaw’s name was mentioned, Jacob’s entire energy changed. He had been holding himself taut, wired, and he was still doing so now. But there was a menace now. Not that there wasn’t one before, but it was different. A heat.

  This was a chill.

  Below zero.

  It was unnerving, to say the least.

  “You’re meeting Ethan Kershaw,” he ground out.

  I smoothed my pants, inhaling and exhaling before moving toward my desk to gather my things. I made sure my movements were even, practiced, calm. I felt anything but.

  “I’m surprised you know of him,” I said after a long moment.

  His eyes were onyx. “You’re not surprised I know him. You know what circles I come from, therefore you know he works in those same ones. It’s why you employed me after all, you need a monster to protect you from another monster.”

  “You’re not a monster, Jacob,” I replied. My voice was no longer flat.

  He gave me a look to melt metal and to flay my skin. “We’re not talkin’ about what I am. We’re talking about who Ethan Kershaw is. What he is.”

  The way he spoke unnerved me. The mere sliver of emotion, of fury into his words, the fact he was speaking them at all scared me. Jacob was not a man to react to just anyone. And someone who Jacob reacted to like this was more than dangerous.

  But I knew that already.

  “Who I am is Charlotte Crofton, and I have a reputation to uphold. It’s only polite to inform him of the breaking of our business relationship in person,” I said, slipping my phone into my purse.

  Jacob moved in a flash, his hand circling my wrist tightly. “This is not a fuckin’ man you’re polite to. This is not a man you’re even in the same room as.”

  I regarded him coolly, pretending I wasn’t reacting to his touch. But I was. Every part of me was hot and cold at the same time and my heartbeat increased rapidly. “This is not something you get to comment on.”

  He didn’t break my stare, his grip tightening. “I’m not letting it happen.”

  I raised my brow, knees shaking. “The fact you’re under the impression that you can let me do anything concerns me greatly. This is not your decision.”

  Pain radiated through my wrist. I didn’t show it. “The man is beyond dangerous,” he said.

  “I’m aware,” I replied, my voice ice. “I’ve done my research. I’m not afraid of him.”

  “That’s the fucking problem,” he hissed, emotion seeping into his voice for the first time...ever. “He’ll see you’re not afrai
d of him, and then he’ll make it his mission to make sure you are when he’s done with you.”

  Something flickered in his gaze.

  Something that had me wavering. Which of course was why I yanked my hand from his, positioning my purse on my shoulder.

  “He can try. But I don’t scare easily. And I didn’t get to where I was by hiding in my ivory tower, Jacob.”

  I turned and walked out the door.

  He followed me.

  “Ah, the famous Charlotte Crofton,” the devil in the suit greeted me, he was still sitting at the head of a long, glass conference table. The New York skyline glittered behind him and his outline was carved stark with the custom black suit, under which he had a crisp black button down, open collar.

  It was intended to show off his corded neck, likely to communicate that this man didn’t need to wear a conventional suit and tie, that he was both above and below that.

  He grinned, showing straight white veneers, that was a jarring contrast to the onyx of his suit. “I’ve heard so much about you, your pictures don’t do you justice.” He stood, eyes running over me in a way that made my skin crawl. Not because it was an obvious leer. Because it was the opposite of that. Because his eyes ran down my body like they saw the demons underneath, the weakness.

  Everything about the man was smooth, attractive. From his voice to his custom suit, to his hair, to his tanned skin. His jaw was angular, sharp, masculine. He was tall, but not towering over me like the man trailing in behind me, closer to my back than he ever had been. Instantly I sensed he was dangerous, like the man behind me. But in a much different way.

  I took his outstretched hand, though my instincts screamed at me not to initiate any kind of contact. “Pictures rarely do anyone justice,” I replied, my voice even. I didn’t react at the coldness of his hands, the filth that seemed to settle on my skin as he held the contact for a few crucial beats more than was socially acceptable. I didn’t try to struggle from the grip, didn’t betray an ounce of discomfort, which I knew was his goal.

  Energy pulsated from the area behind me from where I imagined Jacob’s steely glare on the handshake.