by Ellen Lane
He was far too good at this for a man she hadn’t been sure had a sex drive until a few weeks ago. “Yes…”
Then he was kissing her neck, all the way up to the soft, tender spot behind her ear, and Charlotte might have died happy at that exact moment.
If a knock hadn’t come on the door.
At the sound of it, they both froze. The query was faint - coming through the sitting room and down the short hallway to where they lie on the bed - but there was no mistaking it. Charlotte fully intended to ignore it until the knocking sound came again - louder this time.
“Charlotte?” To her surprise, it was Toshiro’s voice that reached them. “Charlotte, are you awake? I’m sorry to bother you, but, do you know where Vlad is? He’s not in his room.”
Shit.
She could hardly tell him the truth - that his brother was currently very intimately joined with her and had been in her room half the night. But she could hardly pretend to be asleep either. Toshiro sounded worried. Charlotte opened her mouth to speak - even though she had no idea what she was going to say - only to be interrupted by the man behind her. “I’m fine, Toshiro. I’ll meet you in a few hours.”
Her eyes widened in shock. If nothing else, Charlotte would have thought the last thing Vladimir wanted was for his brother to know that he was with her. At the very least, he might have made some excuse about an early morning meeting.
But there was none of that. Merely a simple, firm admission before Vladimir’s arm was wrapping around her waist - pulling her closer and reminding her that he was deep enough inside her to make her gasp.
Charlotte had no idea if Toshiro left. For all she knew, he could be listening at the door.
And if he was, there would be no way she could ever face him again. Vladimir quickly set to making sure that she gave anyone who might be nearby an earful, and Charlotte was in no position to think about the ramifications of his actions.
By the time she and Vladimir had finally exhausted their hunger for one another, it was close to ten in the morning. Charlotte wasn’t sure she could stand on her own two feet and she felt her face burning as Vladimir watched her gingerly press her toes beneath the rich carpet of the bedroom.
His scowl came back with a vengeance. “You’re hurt.”
His assumption had her sighing in exasperation as she pushed away the hand he offered her. “Vladimir, calm the hell down. I am not hurt. What I am is recovering from an all-nighter after a year plus of celibacy.” The moment she tried to take a step, her legs collapsed beneath her and Charlotte yelped as Vladimir gathered her into his arms.
This was embarrassing as hell. As far as she knew, she’d never been fucked so thoroughly she couldn’t even walk. She hadn’t even known that was a real thing. “Vladimir, really,” As he returned her to the bed, she caught his face between her hands, looking him in the eye. “I’m fine, I promise. So you can stop with the moping and the guilt. It’s not a good look for you.”
That comment was enough to make him snort in amusement, taking her hands from him a moment before he straightened. When the man next met her gaze, his expression was strange - both soft and lustful at the same time. It was enough to make Charlotte’s stomach clench as she tugged the coverlet over her nakedness. “I’ll run a bath for you.”
With that gruff statement, Vladimir disappeared into the bathroom, leaving her to her thoughts.
It was probably the worst time to do so. In the wake of the past six or seven hours she’d spent with the man, Charlotte’s brain kicked into overdrive. She drew her knees up and against her chest as she contemplated what their sleeping together meant.
And if it truly changed anything at all.
It was, after all, just the culmination of all the sexual tension that had grown between them. If Charlotte was honest with herself, she could admit that she’d wanted Vladimir from the first time she saw him. At this juncture, that was almost four months ago.
Four months was a lot of fantasizing. A lot of sleepless nights, erotic dreams and stifled impulses. When Vladimir had shown up at her suite, part of her had known what he wanted. If he suffered anywhere near as much as she had fighting against her baser impulses...being an adult, then it was no wonder he had taken out his frustrations on her so flagrantly.
The mere memory was almost enough to make her lose her train of thought…
But Charlotte forced herself back to the present moment. After all those speeches Vladimir made about resisting the urges, being adults and not giving in…. the man had seriously screwed her brains out. It was enough to give her fuel to burn for every argument they would ever have in the future.
And once, she might have taken that and run with it.
But things had changed.
For now, Charlotte decided that the only viable option, really, was to take things day by day. For all she knew, once Vladimir left her room, he would pretend that nothing at all had transpired between them. That one might be a little hard to explain to Toshiro, but she wouldn’t be shocked. Vladimir wasn’t the best at confronting controversial topics tactfully.
But she wouldn’t know until they parted - something she had to admit she was strangely reluctant to do.
“Charlotte.” She was jerked from her reverie when Vladimir returned. Somewhere between leaving her and his return trip, he’d found his underwear, and they were all he wore now. The sight, the redhead lamented, was absolutely scrumptious. Last night, she thought she’d had a lovely view of him in the semi-darkness, but in broad daylight...every dream she had about Vladimir was validated without question. “Your bath is ready.”
He looked damn good with his hair mussed and a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. Nothing like the prim and proper man who ran one of the world’s most affluent offices with an iron fist.
This time, when she rose, her legs supported her weight. Charlotte wrapped the blanket around her like a makeshift toga, suddenly shy in the light of day as she made her way towards the bathroom. It took no small amount of effort to keep from flagrantly staring at the long, well-muscled form of the man before her. “Thanks.” She tucked a hank of wild auburn behind her ear a moment before Vladimir’s arm snaked around her waist and he pulled her close to plant an unexpected kiss against her lips.
Charlotte lost herself in it. After all, it might be the last kiss that she and Vladimir shared. Who knew. As their tongues tangled, she swallowed her seemingly insatiable sex drive and fought against the urge to drag him back to bed again. It was past time they began their day, and she was sure Vladimir’s meeting with his brother was going to be awkward enough as it was. “I’m overdue for breakfast with Shiro,” he murmured, once they had parted, “So I’ll see you later.”
“Right,” she managed breathlessly, with a small, irrepressible smile.
Vladimir looked like he might be on the cusp of saying else. He paused and his lips parted a moment before he left her to begin gathering his clothing. Charlotte took that as her cue to close herself in the bathroom. Once inside, she pressed her back against the door, waiting for about five minutes until the audible sound of the suite door closing reached her.
Once it did, she let herself exhale a long breath.
Well...what the hell was she supposed to do now?
**
Vlad showered quickly by simple virtue of manners. It hadn’t been his intention to keep Shiro waiting, after all.
But then again, it hadn’t really been his intention to show up at Charlotte’s hotel room at four in the morning and lose himself in her so completely.
At this point, Vlad was forced to admit that his brother had been absolutely right - at least on most of his points. After being with Charlotte the way he had, he expected to feel guilty. In fact, considering his strict viewpoint on workplace relationships, he should feel downright disgusted with himself.
But there was none of that.
Instead, he found himself inexplicably content. More content than he could last remember being. There had been, of co
urse, a few moments where he had been sure that he was too rough with her. The previous night, Vladimir had been torn between taking his time to savor her and pounding into her until he couldn’t think straight. Ultimately, both had happened, and more than once.
But Charlotte had taken it all in stride. She hadn’t called him a brute - she hadn’t hesitated. From the moment he’d reached for her, she had been passionately his...and now he had trouble thinking of anything else.
But Vladimir tried. As he toweled off and dressed, he tried to remember exactly what had driven him to seek her out the previous night. He had gone back to his room and attempted to have dinner, but he hadn’t been very hungry. He was only able to work for about an hour or so until a cold shower had been necessary.
The thought that Shiro planted in his mind had unmistakably taken root. That somehow giving into his urges was the answer to everything, though Vlad knew the notion had to be ludicrous. But the more he thought about it, the more tempting the option was. In a mere three hours, he had burned through all his reservations about workplace relationships and let his hunger overtake him.
But that hadn’t meant anything immediately.
He was far from a monster. He had no intention of barging into Charlotte’s room and demanding succor. That said, he knew that the excuse he’d given her was incredibly lame. He was doing more than checking on her. He was seeing if her desires had as much of an effect on her sleep pattern as his did.
And on that point, he had been sorely disappointed. Charlotte was fast asleep. At least until he knocked on her door.
She had been drowsy right up until the point that he made to leave, determined to deal with his desires on his own. But the moment she’d grabbed for him, Vladimir knew there was no going back. Knew that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d taken her for his own.
On that point, however, he’d been wrong.
While his few hours with Charlotte had gone a long way in quieting his sex drive and boosting his mood, he found that he wanted to return to her almost the moment he left her. It would have been nothing at all to join her in the bathroom. To slip into the oversized tub with her and have his way with her again.
Or perhaps even sit flush against her as the warm water lapped against them and they washed one another with leisurely indulgence.
Christ. Since when had he become a bleeding romantic? He was thinking of the kind of things his brother Ethan proposed to get women to warm up to a man. Where Ethan was concerned, there was always some sort of romantic contrivance involved. But these thoughts had come to Vladimir completely unbidden.
His genuine desires.
It was enough to worry him - even if worrying was a struggle when he kept reliving the feel of Charlotte beneath him, sighing and moaning his name. He didn’t think he’d ever had a more delicious experience - with a woman or otherwise.
“Vlad!” He had barely realized he had reached the hotel lobby until Toshiro waved him over. The Japanese man stood at the counter, sipping at a cappuccino as he chatted with Yuri. Vladimir wondered momentarily if the older man ever slept. He seemed to bustle around the hotel perpetually, in one corner or another.
Despite the slight discomfort churning in his gut, Vladimir strode over to join them. The last thing he wanted was to discuss what was going on between him and Charlotte with Toshiro now. He himself didn’t even know. Certainly, they had gotten the impulsive, wild lust out of the systems...but he couldn’t help but think that the mere sight of the redhead would be enough to trigger that hunger in him again.
If anything, she’d only turned him into more of a deviant than he already was - and that was certainly saying something.
“Good morning, Vladimir.” Yuri beamed at him, greeting him in Russian. “I trust you slept well?”
He certainly hadn’t done very much sleeping, but Vladimir couldn’t deny that he’d passed the wee hours quite entertained. “Yes, Yuri. Thank you. I hope my brother isn’t keeping you,” He eyed Toshiro in warning. “It’s my fault for being late.”
“Of course not. Always happy to see Toshiro. You should take a leaf from his book and visit more often.” With that, Yuri winked at the younger man conspiratorially before heading to answer the call of one of the restaurant’s wait staff.
Leaving them alone.
The moment he stepped away, Vladimir arched a brow at his brother, waiting for him to speak. He could only imagine what Toshiro had to say after catching him in a position that he had sworn he’d never be found in. He wasn’t going to hear the end of this for the next three weeks - possibly never. But when Toshiro finally spoke, it wasn’t to accuse him of being a hypocrite.
“Shall we have breakfast then?” He turned from Vlad with a faint smile to start towards the dining room. After a moment of stunned silence, Vlad followed him, hardly daring believe his luck. They were seated and situated with coffee and rolls before his brother addressed him again. “So, let’s talk about Dansk.”
At this line of conversation, Vladimir’s brows shot up to join his hairline. Just like that? Toshiro wasn’t going to question him at all? “What about it?” He finally managed, caught somewhere between amusement and suspicion.
Toshiro smirked. “You tell me. You’re the one who wanted to talk business.”
Vladimir scowled at the younger man’s obvious teasing. “But you want to ask me about Charlotte.”
“What about her?” Toshiro fired his own question back at him seamlessly, and Vlad realized that he had all but stepped into his brother’s finely laid trap. His scowl deepened.
“Nothing. You’re right: let’s talk business.”
“Fine with me,” Toshiro held his hands up in a shocking gesture of surrender. “I’m just glad that you’re in a better mood. If Charlotte helped with that, that’s all I need to know.”
Vladimir just stared at him, completely flummoxed. He had believed that there was no way he was getting out of a full interrogation session. He had never been one to dish on his experiences with women, but Toshiro could never resist gloating when he knew he was right about something. And he’d certainly been right this time.
So why wasn’t he gloating?
“So, what are we having for breakfast?” Toshiro continued blithely. Vladimir found his frown softening somewhat.
“Toshiro…. you-”
“Know exactly what you’re going through,” the younger man cut him off with a small, reassuring smile. “So, I’m not going to give you a hard time about it. You can relax.”
And, strangely, Vladimir did. He wasn’t the type to relax - he never had been. He was always on his guard about something, worried about anything and everything. But, in the wake of his evening with Charlotte, and faced with the sibling he trusted the most, he found that he did relax. And Toshiro grinned. “See there, that’s not so bad.”
Vladimir rolled his eyes as he poured his coffee, but he couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face. “See, I would really have busted your balls if you came down here grumpier today than you were yesterday.”
At the very notion, the elder man groaned. “Absolutely impossible.”
The two of them laughed together, and, for a brief moment, Vladimir forgot the weight of the world pressing on his shoulders. He forgot everything that wasn’t the high of being a man who had spent the night with a beautiful woman - and who was lucky enough to enjoy the company of a brother who withstood his difficult attitude.
It was, indeed, the most relaxed he had been in a decent, long while.
Vlad had hoped to catch a glimpse of Charlotte before they finished breakfast, but she still hadn’t appeared in the lobby by noon. There was a part of him that worried at her absence - the same concerns that he’d had the previous night. The only thing that kept him from rushing to her room the moment he and Toshiro finished their meal was the prospect of what she might say if he implied he was worried she’d sustained some long-lasting damage.
The woman demanded that he didn’t consider her fragile o
r breakable - but Vladimir couldn’t help but be concerned. He had never let himself go with another woman quite the way he had with Charlotte. He had seen the slight bruising on her hips from where he’d held her tight enough to leave marks. Marveled at the mess he’d made of her neck and shoulders - of the softly tanned skin on the underside of her breasts...He’d held nothing back.
And she hadn’t complained a single time.
He liked that about her. She was an enthusiastic lover who gave as much attention as she got, and could hardly keep her hands off him.
Vlad turned to his laptop in an effort to banish the erection that had sprouted when he recalled just how talented that soft, sweet mouth of hers was. Or the horrible things he wanted to do to it.
But Charlotte liked horrible things, didn’t she? She liked to be held down, to be bruised, grasped and fucked until she could hardly remember her own name…
When his phone buzzed, Vladimir grasped at it almost desperately. Anything to distract him from tantalizing thoughts of Charlotte Gardner. When he picked up, he spoke to the CEO of Dansk, who told him proudly that Charlotte was already in the office going over the final iterations of the plans they were working on.
So, she had already gone. Vlad found himself wondering if she meant to avoid him. If she was trying to forgo the awkward period that came in the wake of a “one-and-done” sexual encounter.
That was, of course, the safest way to nip this in the bud. To declare that this morning’s interlude had been a one-time thing and continue on as if it had never happened. And Vladimir actually convinced himself that he might be able to pull it off. When he arrived at the office and spoke to Charlotte, he would treat her cordially - even warmly - but there would be no more sexual intrigue. A lapse in what he had believed to be his very righteous judgement.
He maintained that idealism up until he stepped off the elevator in the Dansk offices. He opened his mouth to greet the receptionist there a moment before Charlotte stepped out of a nearby conference room.
And Vladimir scrabbled to pick his jaw up off the floor.