by Ellen Lane
“Screw you.”
“If that’s what you want,” he replied curtly, “I’ll gladly comply. After you tell me what I want to hear.”
Charlotte continued to struggle against him, growing strangely more aroused by the minute. “And what is that?”
“That you’ll allow me into your bed. Into you.” The words made her breath hitch. What the hell was this? She had no right to be getting aroused when he was manhandling her like this. Making demands that he had absolutely no business making! Besides that, anyone could walk into this room at any time. For all she knew, the construction workers were just taking a lunch break. And what if Alexei returned?
“Vladimir, get off me,” she tried, even as her struggling started to ebb. “You’re being an asshole. I don’t like it.”
But she did. Why she had no idea, but the feel of him pressing against her, here, in a public place where anyone could walk in...it gave her a secret thrill of excitement. “I thought you were made for rough handling, Charlotte.” As he said so, one of Vladimir’s hands snaked beneath her hardhat to take a firm handful of her hair to pull taut and she gasped. “Your words, not mine.”
She meant to protest. Really she did, but the only thing that slipped from the redhead was a soft, helpless moan of desire. Vladimir lowered his mouth to hers, muffling the sound as he pressed in even closer to him. Even through all the layers separating them, Charlotte could feel how much he wanted her. God knew she wanted him, even if the man infuriated her sometimes.
Vladimir plundered her mouth masterfully, his tongue tangling with hers as he held her in place. He kissed her until Charlotte was arching against him, her hands curled into the thick wool of his coat as she all but writhed in need. She damned him even as her body screamed for him, and wondered what on earth this man was doing to her usually sharp mind.
When they finally parted, her face was flushed and Charlotte’s heart was pounding against her ribs.
Vladimir’s eyes, she found, had lost their irate edge and, instead, he gazed down at her with an unreadable expression. A long beat passed between them before he spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call.”
“It’s ok,” she breathed, trying to catch her breath. “You were busy.”
“I could have called.” He returned almost immediately. “Forgive me...old habits die hard.”
“I’m...actually glad you didn’t call.” She returned, the corner of her mouth kicking up in a slight smirk. “You might have caught me thinking of you.”
Vladimir’s eyes instantly dilated at her implication. When he spoke, his tone was ragged and hungry. “And what do you do when you think of me, Charlotte?”
She felt her cheeks burn. Usually, Charlotte was completely unabashed when it came to such talk, but here, now, with Vladimir against her, she found that she couldn’t say the words. Vladimir’s free hand slipped from her waist to her hip, and then he was undoing the third button on her coat to slip his hand beneath it and into the crux of heat between her thighs.
Charlotte inhaled sharply at the contact, her grip on him tightening even as she attempted to squirm away. “Vladimir no,” She pleaded, “Not here.”
“Yes, here.” He returned heatedly. “You wanted me, Miss Gardner, here I am. And I want to touch you.”
This was insane. They were in the middle of a dilapidated building with only God knew how much time before someone walked through the open entryway. But Vladimir was undoing the button of her jeans to find the panties beneath soaking and Charlotte found that she didn’t want him to stop half as much as she might lead him to believe. “Vladimir…” She breathed, “What’s gotten into you?”
The man didn’t even want to kiss her in public and now his hand was covering the most intimate parts of her. When two thick digits slid inside her, Charlotte bit back a scream. Dear sweet Jesus, she was already so close and he had barely touched her.
He kissed her again, muffling her moan when his fingers slid deeper to find the spot inside her that made her see stars. Charlotte was clinging to him so hard that her fingers were numb from the cold. All she could feel was the way he touched her - his low murmurings in his harsh mother tongue against her neck and the way her body seemed to be slowly dissolving.
She came in under a minute, gasping, her toes curling in her boots as her legs almost collapsed beneath her. Vladimir kept her upright with his grip on her scalp - a delicious pleasure in pain that only intensified her orgasm until she was left, panting, in his grip.
In the moments after, the chill breeze made her realize just how exposed they are, and some of her finer sensibilities returned fairly quickly. Luckily for her, Vladimir was withdrawing, buttoning her jeans and redoing the fastening of her coat. “Are you warm?”
His voice, still tight with lust, floated over her, almost as if she was in a dream, and Charlotte struggled out of her haze. “Yes...I’m fine.” She managed, her cheeks pink from a mixture of the cold and the incredible experience he’d just given her.
“Come.” He took her arm to lead her from the room and carefully back through the numerous sites of construction. They reached the main floor quickly, and Vladimir paused only for the five minutes it took for him to speak with Alexei and take his report.
Then he returned to her, and a sleek black car was pulling up at the curb. Once they were inside, he surprised her by pulling her against him - something she had never imagined he’d do in public. “I don’t like you angry with me.”
His words made her eyes widen a moment before she burst into laughter. No fucking kidding. The man had fondled her in the middle of an active construction site of pacify her. “Well you might answer my calls then,” she replied, only half-teasing, before she sobered slightly. “Vladimir, you’re not really going to fire Alexei, are you? He didn’t mean anything by it, he was just-”
“If you stop talking about him, I won’t,” Vladimir cut her off curtly, and Charlotte bit back a laugh at the annoyance on his face.
He was jealous.
The thought shouldn’t please her, but it did. Vladimir Kensley, the ever-logical, the insanely precise, was upset that she had spoken to another man. It was adorable.
The workday was hardly over, but the dark-haired man whisked her back to the hotel room and kept her there for the rest of the evening. They called in room service for dinner and got about halfway through it before she fell victim to his insatiable appetite once again. It was more than enough to make up for the previous night, and Charlotte found any and all traces of her ire had completely vanished by the time Vladimir had thoroughly worn her out.
Their days in Russia soon adopted routine pattern of sorts. Charlotte shuddered to think how much the company must be shelling out for a penthouse suite that Vladimir didn’t even sleep in. He always found his way to her bed at the end of the day, and they always rose together to have breakfast in the hotel lobby.
Though they came down separately, Vladimir wasn’t nearly as distant with her as he’d been the first morning after they were together. His touches were subtle and seldom, but he did touch her in broad daylight - beyond the safety of the suite. At the small of her back, when he spoke to her in the office, sliding her coat onto her shoulders after a long day. It was no longer as if he was doing anything and everything he could to avoid even the slightest hint of their involvement.
For Charlotte, these subtle touches were more than enough. Even though she told herself that it was irrational to demand anything more of Vladimir than sating their physical needs, it pleased her that he gave her what she wanted. That he laid claim to her in such a way that Alexei never again brought up the subject of their dinner together.
After breakfast, they split their time between the job site and the office. They weren’t always together, but when they weren’t, Vladimir always called her to update her on his schedule so she was never left waiting for him.
It was, perhaps, one of the nicest gestures he could have paid her, and Charlotte knew that she would be a fool
to take it for granted. Sometime in between checking over construction progress and filing paperwork, they managed to make a few more outings into the city. Vladimir even, with a certain amount of reluctance, showed her the neighborhood in which he’d grown up.
It was a run down, older part of the city that hadn’t seen the attention more touristy parts of the metropolis had, and it was enough to remind Charlotte that not everyone who lived here lived the wealthy, privileged life of the elite. For Vladimir to have come from this...it was nothing short of amazing.
“I did little,” he revealed to her, as she lounged against him in bed one night, her fingers playing errantly through his inky raven hair. “I was a petty thief. I stole and they were on the cusp of institutionalizing me...it was my father who saved me.”
“So, you’re saying,” Charlotte replied almost casually, “That a broken, angry thirteen-year-old boy put in no effort, didn’t bust his ass to become the man you are today? I can’t imagine that Jackson Kensley would allow someone like that at the head of his company, even if he is his adopted son. You don’t give yourself enough credit, Vladimir.”
And he didn’t. Charlotte had long known that Vladimir’s most critical weakness was that he himself was his harshest critic. She had known it the moment he revealed to her that he was slated to take over a multi-billion dollar enterprise in a matter of months and it all hinged on the LA project. The man was a perfectionist, no doubt made that way in his efforts to please the family that had taken him in.
He was far from the child that he had once been - and she didn’t just mean physically.
“You are an enigma, Vladimir Kensley.” She murmured with a sigh, her eyes drifting closed. The man had proved to be the cure to her insomnia. After he was through with her, she could do little else but sleep.
“Vlad.” He replied softly, making her eyes open slightly.
“Hm?”
“Call me Vlad.” It was what his brother called him...and Charlotte felt strangely warm and being extended the same courtesy.
Even though she knew this wouldn’t last, for now, Vladimir Kensley was everything that she needed. He was a stern, constructive boss- if a little pig-headed at times. He was her key to the city of St. Petersburg. Her lover and, even if they didn’t quite understand one another, he was somehow her friend as well.
What more could she possibly ask for?
Chapter 10 - Change of Plans
Three weeks flew by far faster than Vladimir had imagined it would. This was, of course, due majorly to the fact that they were constantly working. They were up at the crack of dawn, absorbed in company matters all day, and they barely had time for dinner before retiring.
Of course, it didn’t help that there was very little actual sleep involved.
Vladimir, who was usually meticulous about his sleeping patterns, found them in the wind when he joined Charlotte in her suite every night. He told himself that he would have her once before retiring, but once always turned into twice...and twice into more. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her - the sounds she made, the way she clutched at him.
And then, of course, there was what came after. Something that he had never indulged in before. They talked.
About everything and nothing at all. It had started with Charlotte asking him about the first time he’d come back to Russia after being adopted. To his surprise, she listened attentively to him for thirty minutes, her fingers drumming lightly across his abdomen. He, in turn, had asked her about her childhood. While Vlad knew that his father and her father knew one another, he could only remember meeting the man a few times when he was younger.
And he’d certainly never met Charlotte. She made an impression that wasn’t easy to forget.
Vladimir considered himself beyond the suffering of his childhood. It was something instrumental to his later life, but he had always considered the Kensleys more family than perhaps anyone but his late mother, and his sister had been long lost to him.
Charlotte, however, spoke of losing her mother at age nine as if it was yesterday. “She had ovarian cancer and they found it too late.” She didn’t dissolve into tears and hysterics, but the grief in the woman’s voice was somehow more effective than either of those things. “It killed us...she was our backbone. The cement that held the family together. She was the one who always told me that I could be whoever I wanted, and damn what anyone else thought.”
Vlad reached down on impulse to cup her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her kiss swollen lips. “Well,” he murmured, “At least I know who taught you to curse like a sailor.”
It made her laugh, lifting the mood considerably.
Making Charlotte Gardner laugh, Vladimir realized, was a rare treat. Almost enough for him to understand why his brother Lucas so enjoyed the company of others. Vladimir had never had the social graces to interact as much as his brothers, but when he was with Charlotte, he seemed for forget his misgivings.
She put him at ease in a way no woman ever had.
While the sex was explosive, Vladimir returned to Charlotte’s room night after night for the intimacy as much as he did for the physicality of the arrangement. Being near her had a calming effect on him that carried him through the day - that was, at least, as long as he didn’t catch any of the Russian construction workers staring at her.
That was enough to foul his mood considerably.
Vladimir had been to St. Petersburg many times - mostly for work, but only one or two occasions, for pleasure alone. Despite the initial hiccups upon arrival, he found he had never enjoyed a trip as much as he did in Charlotte’s company. He wasn’t the only one to notice the fact either. Shiro constantly commented on how chipper he seemed in comparison to his usual stern demeanor.
Eventually, however, their last few days in St. Petersburg were upon them. Vladimir spent a number of them closeted with his brother in the office, in phone conference with their father, giving him an update on the building progress. As a result, he didn’t see Charlotte for almost forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight of the precious hours remaining until they returned to the US and the media spotlight.
Sometime during the flurry of activity Vladimir realized that there were less than six months remaining until he was poised to take over leadership of the company from his father. It was enough to incite a slight moment of panic - just before he remembered the words Charlotte had murmured against the crown of his head.
So, you’re saying that a broken, angry thirteen-year-old boy put in no effort, didn’t bust his ass to become the man you are today? I can’t imagine that Jackson Kensley would allow someone like that at the head of his company, even if he is his adopted son. You don’t give yourself enough credit, Vladimir.
They were words that he had always brushed off. His mother spoke them almost constantly, his father always emphasized just how proud he was and his brothers gave him their endless support.
So why did Charlotte saying them make any difference?
“You ready to go back to LA?” He and Toshiro were sharing a cup of coffee at around three in the morning, and Vladimir didn’t even realize how lost he had been in his own thoughts until his brother spoke to him.
He looked up to find the Japanese man fixing him with a worried expression and frowned. “What’s that look for?”
Toshiro arched a brow. “Do you really have to ask?”
Vladimir groaned. “If this is about Charlotte, I’m perfectly capable of handling things with her myself.”
“You’re the one obsessed with Charlotte, Vlad,” Toshiro caught him with a wry smile. “All I care about is you.”
“So, you’re worried about me,” Vladimir returned flatly, taking a long sip of the life-giving caffeine that he held. “I think we’ve switched places.”
“Oh, please, Vlad,” Toshiro rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his own coffee before setting the mug on the table as he sobered. “It’s coming up on the one year mark. Less than six months now.”
Vladimir me
rely nodded, his expression carefully neutral. “How’s the project in LA going?” Toshiro knew as much as Vladimir what their father had been attempting to do when he assigned the man to the project. For Vlad, who always followed the rules, thinking outside the box was his biggest challenge.
And Charlotte Gardner was the embodiment of that.
Vladimir answered with complete honesty. “Quite well.” In the weeks that they’d been gone, both he and Charlotte had been in correspondence with Charlie, who gave them updates almost daily. The framing for the entire building had been laid and the first floors were beginning to take their incredible shape. “We’re ahead of schedule, and I’m looking forward to the first walkthroughs.”
“Well, that’s a far sight different than you sounded when work on the building began.” Toshiro replied casually. “You were up in arms about the design-”
“And I’m still not crazy about it. It’s unorthodox...completely different than any other building in the skyline.” He had watched, slightly confounded, as the building that Charlotte worked on here began to shape with only slightly less abstract detailing than the one in LA and simply done his best to accept it. He knew how she worked, he knew about the money they would save and he knew that her style was one that he couldn’t comprehend...just like he could hardly comprehend what was between them.
“Vlad...I’m going to tell you something, and you might not like it.” The statement was enough to make the taller man tense in his seat.
“Alright.”
Toshiro folded lithe fingers together, pressing them to his chin a moment before he spoke. “You don’t like change. You like predictability and a firm schedule. You like things you can control and manipulate...and it’s one of your few weaknesses.”