by Ellen Lane
“He attacked you and sucked your face off.” Lila was having entirely too much fun with this - that much was evident by her smirk and the way she amended certain events Charlotte told her about.
“He didn’t attack me…”
“My guess…” Ben mused, taking a careful sip of his own beer, “Is that he’s liked you for a while, and that little stunt triggered something.”
For a while? How long was a while!? Charlotte was pretty sure that, when they met, Vladimir couldn’t stand her. In the past few weeks they had just come to a kind of agreement in their lunches together. It was their time to talk about the project, for a bit of playful banter, and a medium through which they could get to know one another.
Never, once, during that time, had she thought that Vladimir might be looking at her with anything other than careful tolerance. Friendly interest, at the most, but nothing that would make him handle her the way he did.
The way she longed for him to.
Charlotte honestly didn’t think she’d ever had a more erotic experience in her thirty years. Sure, she’d been laid. She’d even been laid in some very exotic places - but still, the sex was sex. What Vlad had done to her...it had triggered something carnal. Something she had only, until that encounter, felt when she woke up from a particularly vivid sexual dream.
Only this time, it hadn’t been a dream. Vladimir had really been touching her, really kissing her...and Charlotte had almost lost her mind. Despite his tentativeness with everything else, the man had no hesitancy when it came to his physical needs. It was funny, up until a week ago, Charlotte had spent a good chunk of time wondering what kind of woman Vladimir Kensley liked. He seemed the type to be drawn to high class socialites - prim, pretty little daughters of rich parents who aimed to marry well and produce upper crust brats who would repeat the same process all over again.
She had laughed at the very notion. While Charlotte knew she wanted kids one day, she would make sure that they worked just as hard as she did to get what they wanted. The work was part of the experience. The last thing Charlotte wanted was to be a mother to children who didn’t know the value of hard work. That would be doing her father a disservice - at least, that was the way she saw things.
But she was hardly thinking of having kids just now, and she certainly wasn’t thinking of having them with Vladimir Kensley. She merely thought it was funny that she had been so wrong about the way his interests ran. Or maybe she was right and she was the exception to the rule. She was available, so she was what he went after.
But, somehow, Charlotte didn’t think that was it. Vladimir had touched her as if he’d been wanting to do it for half a lifetime - and once he started, she wasn’t sure he’d stop. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. She would have been quite content if he’d fucked her right there on the desk. She’d even tried to goad him into it.
Which hadn’t worked. Quite the contrary in fact. He had all but turned her own ploys against her and she retreated with her tail between her legs.
Wanting more.
“So now what?” Lila asked her, signaling to the waiter for another martini. This place had one of the best happy hour specials in the city, and they were taking full advantage of it. Honestly, Charlotte probably wouldn’t have spilled so much if she wasn’t three drinks in, but with a little buzz, it was good to finally get all this off her chest. “He’s admitted he wants to do you, you know you want to do him, but it probably isn’t a good idea for either of you.”
“Definitely not a good idea,” Charlotte amended, asking for another martini herself. “It would fuck up literally everything.”
“Including you.”
“Lila, for the love of God, grow up.” Benny elbowed her at the comment and Lila elbowed him right back, emboldened by the alcohol.
“What? I’m just looking out for her.”
“I can look out for myself,” Charlotte piped up in her own defense.
Lila merely sighed. “What did you have to eat today?” It was a good question. She hadn’t had the opportunity to meet Vladimir for lunch - their lunches since their little midnight office interlude had been a little awkward anyway, like trying to pretend a bomb hadn’t detonated - so she had worked right through it.
Which meant she was currently drinking on an empty stomach. Sheepishly, she eyed her friend and Lila merely made a knowing sound. “Right. Take care of yourself.”
“Well, let’s get some wings then!” Benny gestured to the waitress who was passing by with a tray of cocktails.
It would be good if she got something into her stomach, but just then, wings were the furthest thing from Charlotte’s mind. What she wanted was to be in Vladimir Kensley’s arms again - kissing him without a care in the world. Ready and willing to see just how much of a control freak he was.
God help her.
She worked through the next weekend. Charlotte meant to take a few hours off to see a movie with Lila, but, after starting the Kensley building, she had a sudden influx of inquiries from around LA for designs. Though she had been a rising star before, her popularity had fairly exploded overnight. Of course, she barely had the time to tackle Vladimir’s project with all the demands he was making of her, but Charlotte wasn’t lax enough to ignore her full inbox. She did the best she could to start a few mock-ups, make sure people maintained interest.
The Kensley building might be the beginning, but it certainly wasn’t the end. When she finished here, she would need to keep a steady line of work up if she wanted to open her own firm. She would need to find people that shared the same liberal ideas she did where architecture was concerned - though that hardly seemed to be a problem anymore.
If she could get Vladimir Kensley to come around, everything else should be cake, right? And he was halfway there -or so she liked to think.
There was one e-mail, however, that caught her eye. It was from an oil and fuel subsidiary in Russia that was looking to renovate an office building in St. Petersburg. It was evident from the pictures they sent her that the structure had good bones, and she found herself inexplicably excited. It was one of few international requests she’d gotten, and she was just aching to go abroad - as much to stretch her wings as to see other cities’ architecture first hand.
Of course, she knew she couldn’t just leave in the middle of the project that was her big break. But that didn’t stop her from taking a Saturday afternoon at her drawing table to start some designs. While Charlotte had intended the endeavor to be a simple exercise, she ended up whiling away the afternoon and most of the evening - and before she knew it, she had the bare bones of a complete set of plans.
She couldn’t not send them off.
It wasn’t even a given that she would get a reply. Charlotte knew that she was probably only one of many they’d sent the invitation to, and she’d be lucky if they even responded at all.
But they did.
Shocking the hell out of her, the company replied less than three hours after she’d submitted her rough sketches, and when she read their response, Charlotte almost fell out of her chair.
They wanted her. They wanted her to come to Russia and work on the remodeling of their building.
What the hell kind of dream was she living in? First, she somehow managed to get the Kensley project over several much more qualified and lauded architects in the same city, and then some company in Russia all but streamlined her to the front of the crowd?
Honestly, she expected to wake up at any moment.
But, luckily, a very hard, very painful pinch asserted to her that this was not, in fact, a dream. She was very much awake.
Which meant that if she wanted any chance of tackling this project at all, she was going to have to see how it meshed with the building schedule of Vladimir’s project.
There was no way in hell he would let her go - kiss or not. It was against his code of ethics. If he was taking his time to be at the jobsite almost every day, it was almost certain that he wasn’t about to let her skive off on an
other project. It was almost enough to make Charlotte wish they were sleeping together. Then, she might have been able to use some of her feminine charm.
After about ten minutes of something bordering on panic, she forced herself to take a seat at her drawing table and really think. There had to be a way for her to handle this. Major architects worked on more than one project at a time almost constantly. She wasn’t quite big leagues yet, but who said that she couldn’t do the same?
All she needed was Vladimir’s approval.
Before she could even begin to come up with any far-fetched plans, her phone buzzed from just beside her, making her jump. It was close to ten in the evening. Who on earth would be calling her at this hour? Everyone was in bed already - she should be in bed.
But, instead, she was staring at her phone -and nearly dropping it when she realized that the one calling her was none other than Vladimir Kensley herself.
For a moment, the panic returned. Why would he be calling her? The only other time he’d ever called her had been to ask her where she was when she’d woken up late one morning. She didn’t think Kensley was the type to courtesy call - even if he had admitted to wanting to fuck her.
Tentatively, she answered. “Vladimir?”
“Charlotte.” His reply was crisp - just like he was - with just a hint of that ungodly sexy accent. Charlotte did her best not to remember what he’d sounded like when she wrapped her legs around him...as if it were all he could do to keep himself from eating her alive… “Sorry to contact you so late, but I wanted to talk to you about Russia.”
The young woman’s eyes widened in shock. He wanted to talk to her about Russia? Exactly what did he want to talk about? Had he somehow found out that she was doing some extra designing on the side? Was she in trouble?
“What about Russia?” She tried sounding as innocent as she could.
“They want us to leave in the next two weeks to take a look at the building. They wouldn’t require you to be there for the entire build, of course - they know how important our work is here in LA-”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Charlotte stopped him, her head spinning in confusion. What in the world was he talking about? They? Did that mean that the company in Russia had already informed him that they wanted her for the project and he approved? That was better than anything she could have hoped for. “What project are you talking about? I’m a little lost.”
When he next spoke, Vladimir sounded somewhat surprised. “Dansk hasn’t yet told you they’ve chosen your design?”
Dansk was the name of the company that had just contacted her! “Well, yeah, they have; but when did they tell you?”
To her surprise a low, amused chuckle came through the receiver. It was enough to send a surge of heat rushing through her belly as her toes curled. “Charlotte, Dansk is a subsidiary of Kensley Enterprises. It appears my father is quite fond of your work.”
For a long moment, Charlotte could only gape. Jackson Kensley was the one who had OK’ed her design for Dansk? She knew that he liked her designs, but two for two...when she wasn’t even finished with the first one? Now she had to wonder…
“I... suppose I certainly can’t complain,” she managed, resolving to talk to her father about this entire scenario. Though she was always grateful for work - especially work from a company as renown as Kensley enterprises, she had to wonder if he wasn’t talking her up to Jackson - trying to make her seem larger than life.
It didn’t sound like him. Though Trevor Gardner was more than happy to brag about his daughter, he never did it unprovoked. He liked to let Charlotte speak for herself under most circumstances. But it was hard for the redhead to think of any scenario where Jackson Kensley might have pinpointed her for two such important projects, one right after the other.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Vladimir’s crisp reply brought her back to the matter and hand - and that matter would be that, apparently, she was going to be traveling to Russia with him. She was going to Russia with Vladimir Kensley.
Charlotte found herself muffling the cry of unparalleled delight that rose in her throat. She could only imagine what a plethora of architectural delights St. Petersburg would be - how much inspiration she could draw for her own work. And then there was the project itself. She’d never been the head of a remodel as extensive as the one for Dansk, and they were basically giving her free reign.
If this was a dream, she prayed she wouldn’t wake up. “In any event, I called you to talk about our travel arrangements.” Vladimir’s statement brought to bear another, glaringly important aspect of this trip. It was clear that they were meant to travel together - and Charlotte was going to have to contend with that fact.
“What about them?” She inquired tentatively. She imagined they might take the same plane, or perhaps the company was going to comp her for travel entirely. But Vladimir’s explanation turned out to be neither of those things - and practically blew the top of her head off.
“We’ll be taking the Kensley jet to St. Petersburg next Wednesday. We’re expected to stay in St. Petersburg for about three weeks, so you’ll want to make sure he has everything to make sure the framing goes smoothly in your absence.”
Three weeks. Three weeks!?
Also: a private jet? What the almighty hell!?
“Three whole weeks?” She found herself exclaiming in surprise. “I can’t be away from the project for a month! What if they need me?”
“If there’s an emergency,” Vlad provided almost casually, “We can fly you back to LA. But considering the foundations are done and Charles has literally hundreds of pages of detail on the frame, I think your time would be better served in St. Petersburg - if only for a little while.”
“And...and you?” Charlotte grasped vainly for any other protests that might save her from what promised to be a very dangerous undertaking. “Why do you have to go if Jackson’s overseeing the project?”
“He’s not.” Vladimir returned - he had an answer for everything. “The project actually falls under Toshiro’s jurisdiction, but he doesn’t speak Russian. I do. And I have intimate ties with the country.”
Of course he did. He’d been born there, for Christ sake. How could she imagine he wouldn’t take the opportunity to go to Russia if one presented itself? Or that the company would so much as hesitate for a single second to send him there?
But those, Charlotte knew, weren’t her real problems. The more pressing issue lie with the heavy air of sexual tension that pervaded every time they were together. Ever since that kiss - if it could even be called that; Vladimir had all but dry-fucked her against the edge of his desk - she could hardly think about anything else when she was with him. Oh, they pretended everything was normal. They carried on with their lunches and made small talk about the project, the weather, and everything in between - but it was obvious what each of them was really thinking about. There were times Charlotte caught him looking at her out of the corner of her eye - and the hunger in his deep blue gaze was enough to make every muscle in her body clench in obscene desire.
But they were, as Vladimir had so poignantly reminded her, adults. Adults who happened to be working together in close quarters, and, as such, would maintain a platonic working relationship, regardless of the heated tension between them.
It helped, of course, that when they met they were almost always in public places. At a street stall or a restaurant for lunch, or else on the job site. When they were surrounded by people, it was easier for her to pretend that she didn’t want to climb the man like a fucking tree.
But she presumed they would be the only ones traveling to Russia in that jet - meaning they would be alone, and all that kept her from giving into her screaming libido was her sensibilities.
And she didn’t know how much she trusted them. “Are you there, Charlotte?” She realized, in a split second, that he was talking to her, and she had missed what he said completely.
“I’m here, sorry.” She recovered quickly. “What did you say?
”
“I said pack for cold weather.”
Charlotte arched a brow. “But it’s spring.”
“In LA, it’s perpetually spring,” Vladimir returned dryly. “I’ll e-mail you the details. Until next Wednesday, Charlotte.” With those last words, he hung up the phone, leaving the young woman staring at it, utterly flummoxed.
When they weren’t in the same room, Vladimir was all too adept at pretending he hadn’t all but mauled her in his office. He was just as formal and impersonal as he’d been when they first met - and it was almost enough for her to let her guard down. After all, she too, could pretend, Charlotte reminded herself. She had spent the first few weeks of their acquaintance pretending she wasn’t insanely attracted to the man - should a single kiss really change all of that?
She set her phone back down on her drawing table with a frown. She knew damned well it had - but like hell if she would let Vladimir know it. It might very well kill her, but she wouldn’t touch him on this trip. Just as he’d suggested, she would do the adult thing, and move beyond her impulses. If he could do it, then she certainly could. She wouldn’t let herself be outdone by a man that thought everything boiled down to hard analyses and predictability.
He might even predict that the sexual strain between them would undo her - he could be counting on it. The thought was outlandish, she knew, but no more outlandish than the man kissing her in the first place, and Charlotte planned to prepare for everything to the very best ability.
Dress warm, he said? She’d dress in a fucking furry muumuu every single day. He wouldn’t catch a glimpse of even the tiniest inch of bare skin if she could get away with it.
Certainly, she was excited to be going to Russia, but she was going to pull a Kensley on this one: the job came first. She was going there to work, and she was going to act, at least, that Vlad accompanying her was just convenience.
That, after all, was a lot more likely than him having some crazy plan to get into her pants. He didn’t seem like the type. In fact, she knew he wasn’t.