Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

6. Zoya

6

ZOYA

“ Y ou can’t seriously be contemplating this,” I murmur to myself as my rust bucket slowly pulls up to a massive steel-and-glass structure taller than the clouds.

Mikhail was right. You can’t miss his building. It’s huge and impressive, with a doorman and a team of valets who are so eager for me to move on one walks up to my driver’s side window before I reach the line several other vehicles are vying for.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

White air puffs from my mouth as I wind down my window. “Uh… I didn’t mean to come this way. I am seeking the service entrance.”

An expression crosses his face I have no issue deciphering.

He thinks I am him—that I’m the help.

“Past the potted hedge and to the right.”

I drink in the hedge before asking, “Is that the closest exit?”

He either doesn’t hear me or is too rushed off his feet to act cordially. “Past the hedge and to the right,” he repeats before he races to a flashy car cutting the line.

I can’t see who is seated behind the wheel. He must be famous, because camera bulbs flash as often as the motorists he cut off toot their horns.

“Ma’am,” a second concierge says, startling me, “I need you to move, please. You’re creating a fire hazard.”

A fire hazard in a driveway?

Too frazzled by the frenzy occurring around me to argue, I mouth an apology before seeking an opening in the long valet line. My gears crunch when I find a small gap between two low-riding vehicles that appear almost futuristic. LEDs light up the underbelly of their over-polished shells, and their pistons hiss with only the slightest compression of their gas pedals.

My engine is so old it chokes and splutters more than it purrs.

It’s more like its owner than I previously realized.

I plan to zip out of the line and back onto the street with the rest of society, but the traffic only flows in one direction—to the underground parking lot.

I grow so dizzy following the procession of designer cars to the lower level of the lot that I either pull over and settle the rush of nausea it’s caused or spend the remainder of my night cleaning vomit from my clothes.

Sweat dots my neck when I park in the first available space. It is meant for electric vehicles requiring a charge, but I don’t care. Rules are meant to be broken, and if a bend in the road saves me from an unwanted barf-fest, I’ll be the first to explore it.

The reminder sees me snagging the keys I left the Broadbent Hotel with, and my phone from the middle console, before I head for the elevator marked Personnel Only.

I jump out of my skin when the elevator call button fails to illuminate no matter how many times I jab it. It isn’t my annoyance of its faulty nature causing my skittishness. It’s the husky voice projecting from a speaker next to my head startling me.

Mikhail chuckles at my frightened response before he repeats his request for me to place the key he gave me into a slot at the side of the elevator’s checker plate doors.

“If any rando could ride the service elevator, I’d have to get more than one bed.”

I realize he’s watching me when his laughter deepens after I roll my eyes.

“There you go,” he murmurs when the twist of a key illuminates the elevator button. “You’ll be as snug as a bug in a rug in no time.” Either more time passed than I realized, or the trio’s eagerness to get Mikhail alone saw him leaving his shift earlier than planned, because there’s no denying the sorrowed whine of three thirsty women at the end of his sentence. “Not you guys. Jesus. We just got here.” His voice loudens, announcing his focus is back on me. “You good, Sunshine? The girls are getting impatient.”

I gag. What’s with the nicknames today? I went from having none to multiple in hours.

I’m also jealous. Not of Mikhail moving on after my rejection, but that he’s having the fun I swore I would have when I gave up stability for the right to make my own decisions.

If I had followed the life plan my mother had devised for me, I wouldn’t have needed to work a day in my life. My husband would have been as old as he was decrepit. Since his age would force him to overlook my fertility issues, the societal standards of the rich would permit me to display only graciousness.

I glare at the speaker box when Mikhail asks, “Do you need a cuddle or a shit? I’ve not quite worked out your expressions yet.”

My reply instantly halts his chuckles. “I need to get laid.”

“Then why the fuck am I all the way over here instead of in my bed, working out your best O face?”

With the ease of our conversation making it seem as if we’ve been friends for decades, I shrug. “It probably has something to do with your marshmallow heart. I’m not a fan of soft and gooey things.”

“That’s the only soft and gooey thing you’ll get from me, sweetheart. The rest is hard, thumping, and—Jesus fucking Christ, Kitty. You know my cock is attached, right? It isn’t detachable like the big black beast Jasmina is whirling around her…” A moan cuts him off this time instead of an impatient woman. “Sunshine, I’ve got to go. Help yourself to anything you want. Nothing is off-limits.” As he pulls his phone away from his ear, I hear him say, “I don’t recall giving any of you permission to start without me.”

I stop staring at the speaker box like podcast voyeurism is my kink when the elevator dings, announcing its arrival on my floor.

I’ve barely stepped inside when its doors slam shut and it begins its climb to the penthouse. I didn’t even need to select my floor.

Stupidity smacks into me hard and fast when it stops its climb only one floor later. A man grumbling his frustration about being stalked by the paparazzi enters the confined space at the speed of a bullet being dislodged from a gun.

He’s so riled up that we ascend three floors before he realizes he has company. My unexpected presence causes the hairs on his nape to bristle, and the anger teeming out of him makes the conditions unbearable.

“If you’re a reporter hoping for an exclusive, you entered the wrong fucking elevator.” His last three words are roars, but I pay the most attention to the molten lava hotness of his voice.

I’ve heard it before, only hours ago, and it was as dangerous to my libido back then as it is now.

I can’t move, speak, or think.

All I can do is fight the urge not to melt like a popsicle on a hot summer’s day.

“All requests for an interview are to be directed through my office.” As Andrik spins to face me, his heated words batter the brushed steel casing of the inner walls of the elevator. “You do not approach me in private.”

When his eyes lift and lock with mine, their sheer fury buckles, replaced with intrigue. He stares at me as if I am a mirage.

Then lust takes hold.

“Zoya.”

I’m as stunned now as I was when the icy-blue eyes and cut jaw his voice conjured slowly presented as he spun around.

How does he know my name?

We didn’t exchange introductions.

Andrik’s eyes bounce between mine for several heart-thrashing seconds before he asks, “What are you doing here?”

“I… ah…” Mikhail’s keys jangle when I brush away a bead of sweat the unbelievable heat in the elevator caused my temple, and they break through some of the lusty fog Andrik’s closeness incites. “I’m returning these to a… friend .”

I can be forgiven for my stumble of Mikhail’s title.

He was a stranger only hours ago.

As was the man whose anger returns to the boiling point so fast steam almost billows from his ears. “You know Mikhail?”

“Uh-huh,” I answer, a better response above me.

I don’t work well in the heat. It is one reason I frequently return to Russia even with opportunities abroad far exceeding any I’ll receive locally.

I also struggle leaving my best friend behind, and the toil worsened when she practically lost her parents within days of each other.

When Andrik works his jaw from side to side, its crunch returns my focus to the present. He drags his hand across the bristles covering a majority of his panty-wetting jawline before he attempts to force words through the tightness. “Enough for him to give you private access to his penthouse?”

“Uh-huh,” I repeat, too focused on unearthing what has caused the fury in his eyes.

Mikhail offered me his bed for the night, not his hand in marriage. Andrik’s spasming jaw and narrowing eyes would have you convinced otherwise.

“That’s surprising.”

“It is?” I reply, stupidly wanting to continue our conversation since my ego is feeding off the tension it is creating.

“Uh-huh,” Andrik mocks, his tone low. “Because he only ever gives access to the girls he wants to fuck.” He steps closer, brooding and looming. “ Again .” His expression is as ugly as his words, but it still makes me squirm. “So what number is this, Zoya Galdean? Date two, three, or four?”

His words get hotter and deeper with each one he speaks, and they make me so reckless I foolishly fall for the ruse that he’s more jealous than angry.

“I’m not exactly sure. Does the consummation of a meal count as a date? Or only if an orgasm is achieved?”

“If?”

His brows are too pinched to show the laughter in his eyes, his expression too taut, but I don’t need to hear it to know of its arrival. It batters my chest with its rumbles.

That’s how close he stands when he murmurs, “There are no ifs, милая . Not when you’re fucked by a real man.”

He grips my chin and shoves my head to the side before he drags his nose down the pulse in my neck. When he reaches the risqué neckline of my shirt dusting my collarbone, he growls. Its deep rumble skates through my veins before clustering in my needy pussy.

“Which I’d say you haven’t experienced in a long time. If ever.”

Hating that he is mocking me, I attempt to push him back. He doesn’t budge an inch.

He leans in deeper, dampening my panties to a point I can no longer ignore. “Do you want me to show you the difference, милая ? Or shall I skip straight to demonstrating how to get past page seventeen?”

His reminder that I’m so broken I need a brochure to enjoy something many people take for granted intensifies my mood.

When denied, even by my own doing, I get bitchy.

“And have you steal the honor Mikhail has worked so hard to achieve? Don’t be ridiculous.”

My body tingles when he inches so close I can feel the anger my statement caused him all over me. “Lie to me again and I’ll take you over my knee.”

“Who said I am lying?”

My insides clench when he licks his lips before he lowers his eyes to my nipples budded against my shirt.

Mercifully, I’m saved from needing to explain my stupidity by the elevator arriving at the top floor.

If only something so simple could save me from myself.

“Good evening, Mr.…” He seems more pleased I don’t know his last name than disappointed. “I hope your night is as pleasant as mine is about to become.”

I wish I could stay so his growl could glide across every inch of me instead of solely my face, but with the elevator doors beginning to close, I have no time to spare.

I duck under Andrik’s arm and hightail it for the exit, almost in the clear before my wrist is snatched and I’m yanked back with a rueful tug.

Instincts have me rearing up for a fight. My hand sails wildly before I can consider the consequences of my actions. It slaps Andrik so firmly across the face that his head slings sideways.

It does little to loosen his grip on my wrist, though.

It firms to the point of being painful, and the frozen state it prompts sees not a single protest fired when he pins me to the internal wall of the elevator by my throat.

His grip isn’t painful.

It is the most erotic way I’ve ever been held.

As he stares down at me with flaring nostrils, I try to work out why he isn’t responding how he should be. He should be pissed I struck him, or at the very least, warning me of the consequences that will occur if I do it again. His reaction, however, is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He’s smiling, and lust flares through his eyes so potently I do the last thing anyone should do when they’ve caught the focus of a madman.

I kiss him.