The Akopov Industries corporate headquarters always gives me the creeps.
It’s sixty-five floors of glass and steel designed to make peasants like me feel exactly that—tiny, insignificant, and easily replaceable.
Unfortunately, it’s very good at what it does.
I shift my heavy folder from one arm to the other, trying to pretend like there aren’t sweat stains forming under the armpits of my thrifted blazer. It’s not even hot—I’m just a nervous sweater. One of my many genetic gifts. Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad.
But why am I sweating? That’s dumb. This is a very easy task. Robots could do it. Monkeys could do it. Robot monkeys could almost certainly do it.
Probably with less sweat, too.
“Just deliver the quarterly reports,” I mutter to myself, mimicking my best friend Natalie’s voice. “Super easy. In and out in five minutes.”
Right. Easy for her to say when she isn’t the one being sent into the lion’s den.
Technically, this should be her job. But Nat is so obscenely pregnant that I’ve been keeping her away from sharp objects so she doesn’t accidentally get popped like a balloon and go whistling around the office. Therefore, it’s fallen in my lap to schlep this thick stack of financial statements up to the king of the castle himself.
The elevator dings as it passes the thirtieth floor. Still only halfway there. Fantastic.
Too much time alone with my thoughts has never, ever been a good thing. Today is no exception.
I catch my reflection in the mirrored walls. Mousy brown hair pulled into a messy bun. Dark circles under my eyes from staying up late finalizing the Miller campaign last night.
Not that anyone had noticed my extra effort.
Not that anyone will ever notice.
Certainly not him. The lion himself.
Vincent Akopov. Son of Andrei Akopov, Russian immigrant turned tech billionaire.
My boss’s boss’s boss’s boss…
… and the star of approximately nine billion of my inappropriate daydreams.
“Get it together, Row,” I whispered. “He probably doesn’t even know the marketing department exists. He sure as hell has no clue who you are.”
Right on cue, the elevator slows to a stop at the executive floor.
I’ve only been up here once before, back when I was first hired five years ago. I was fresh out of college, frothing at the mouth with desperation for any job that would pay enough to cover both Manhattan rent and my mom’s medical bills.
I remember every single detail of that day. Gray clouds, windy, frigid with the promise of winter coming soon. My mouth tasted like wintergreen mints and abject, stuttering fear.
And then he strode into the room.
He wasn’t there to interview me—God knows that Vincent would never sully his hands with the likes of hiring lowly worker bees like myself.
He simply swept in as if I didn’t exist, bent down to whisper something in the ear of the Chief Marketing Officer who was conducting the interview, and then started to sweep right back out.
Two things about that swift, brutal interaction stuck out to me.
One was how all it took was a few growled words from Vincent to make the CMO look like she was about to shit her extremely expensive silk slacks. Her face was printer paper white, her lips parted, breath whistling out of her like a forlorn teakettle.
I was instantly terrified of anyone who could do that with so little effort.
The other thing that stuck out was how insanely, impossibly beautiful Vincent was.
He was tall and fit, with the graceful, muscular build of someone who’s never had to work hard to be good at absolutely everything. He was in a black suit, I remember. His hair was black, too. And the pupils of his eyes.
I mean, yeah, obviously the pupils of his eyes were black. Duh, Rowan. But they were black in a way I’d never seen someone’s eyes be before. Like they weren’t just seeing, but were drinking in the whole world and keeping it for himself.
That part stayed with me in particular—because the last thing he did before leaving the room was turn those black, endless eyes on me.
It lasted two seconds, if that. Might’ve been less.
But for as long as it lasted, I was utterly frozen. Even if the building had been on fire, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of my seat.
Then, mercifully, he was gone.
Gone from sight, that is. Not gone from my dreams, though.
Those started that same night.
And for five years, they’ve continued.
The things people whisper about him at work—only when they’re sure he can’t hear them, of course—don’t help much. V-Card Vincent, they call him. He’s been through nine-tenths of the female staff. Unrepentant playboy. Takes “love ‘em and leave ‘em” to never-before-seen heights. The Van Gogh of Virgins. The Monet of Moans. The Picasso of Pu—
That’s where I tend to stop listening.
My subconscious can’t get enough of that stuff, though. And at night, when the curtains are drawn and my apartment door is deadlocked, those rumors come bubbling right back up.
It’s just too easy to imagine those eyes devouring me. Stripping me bare without lifting a finger. To imagine him brushing a lock of stray hair out of my face and whispering, I could take yours, if you want me to, Rowan. Say the word and it’s mine. You’re mine.
Inevitably, boom go the fireworks. Metaphorically speaking.
Back in reality, I shake my head. The impatient elevator won’t wait much longer to disgorge me, so I tiptoe out into the hallway, out onto that familiar, ash-gray carpet.
My shabby, sensible pumps sink deep into the plush nap. I feel like Bambi’s mom stepping into the open glade. As if a hunter’s bullet is gonna turn me into primo venison any second now.
Natalie’s instructions play again in my head. All you’re doing is delivering the quarterly reports. Walk up to the reception desk, tell his secretary—her name is Vanessa—that I sent you. Then hand over the goods and get your little booty outta there before V-Card Vincent swallows you whole.
How simple.
How straightforward.
How completely… impossible.
Because the reception desk is empty. Vanessa is a ghost. My little booty is stuck.
“Hello?” I call out, my voice echoing in the cavernous office.
No response. It feels like I’m on the surface of Mars. No signs of life anywhere in sight.
I glance at my watch. It’s 7:42 P.M. Most normal employees went home hours ago.
But not me. Not Rowan St. Clair, perpetual overachiever and Olympic gold medalist in people-pleasing. A leftover trait from growing up fatherless and becoming Mom’s emotional support child when her diagnosis landed at the ripe old age of eleven.
I sigh and make my way down the hall. “Hello?” I call again. “Is anyone here?”
Radio silence once more. Vanessa, if she even exists, is not within earshot.
“Perfect,” I grumble. “Just perfect.”
I look at the imposing double doors that lead to Vincent’s personal office. Maybe I could just slip in and leave the folder on his desk? If he isn’t there, no harm done. If he is, I’ll stammer out an apology and scurry away like the meek corporate mouse I am.
Genius plan. Flawless. There is not a single chance that this could possibly backfire on me in any way, shape, or form.
I raise my hand to knock.
Then I hear it.
“Yes, right there!”
My hand freezes in mid-air. Surely that can’t be…?
Another moan. Louder this time. Breathier. More…
Oh.
Oh, no.
It is exactly what I think it is.
I should leave. I should absolutely, one hundred percent leave right now. I should turn on my heel, throw the files over my shoulder blindly, and GTFO before I get fired, roped into a weird sex thing that almost definitely violates several HR policies, or both.
But I feel stuck. It’s like there are roots growing from my feet and implanting themselves in the tasteful carpeting of the executive floor. I’m every bit as stuck as I was the day Vincent first looked at me.
Which makes no sense. I’m an adult. I’m twenty-seven-and-three-quarters years old, for crying out loud. You’d think I’d be able to hear two people doing the nasty without my brain getting fried.
But you’d think wrong.
Why?
Because I’ve never done the deed myself.
Even admitting that to myself—as if I wasn’t keenly, painfully aware—makes my cheeks go bright red.
Twenty-seven years on this planet and I’m still the proud owner of a V-card. It just… never happened for me, not in the way it seemed to for most other people. Dad gone, Mom sick, things to do, growing up too fast in all the wrong ways…
I dunno. The math didn’t math.
That’s what I tell myself, at least. Maybe it’s just that I was afraid that a world that had already treated me so cruelly would just keep doing more of the same if I gave it the chance.
So I kept myself locked away. I didn’t date. Didn’t kiss. Didn’t ever raise my voice to ask for the love I so badly needed.
I just let my imagination keep me warm at night.
And it did. It does.
Sort of.
But only in the way that a thin bedsheet on a cold night is barely better than no blanket at all. Like, yeah, sure, if I was brave enough to shuck the sheet and go find a proper duvet, I’d be so much warmer and happier.
Problem is, I’m not that brave.
So I stay huddled up with the meager comforts I do have—with fantasies of a man who doesn’t know I exist—and I tell myself that it’s enough. Even when, deep down, I know it isn’t.
“Harder, please!” the woman whimpers, snapping me out of my morbid downward spiral.
My cheeks are still burning so hot that it’s a miracle the fire sprinklers don’t go off to douse me in anti-horny juice. It is long past time for me to go. Leave these two anonymous deviants to do their anonymous, deviant things.
I turn to leave.
But then my elbow bumps against the door.
Which, apparently, has not been properly closed.
Meaning that, when I make contact…
It swings open.
