ROWAN

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.

2

ROWAN

Vincent Akopov, the man who has starred in my most private fantasies for five years, is looming tall over his desk.

His dark hair falls in perfect disarray across his forehead, those distinctive silver streaks catching the overhead glare like lightning trapped in midnight. His jaw-that impossible sculpture of angles and shadows-clenches beneath the trimmed precision of his beard. The sleeves of his charcoal button-down are rolled to the elbow, revealing forearms mapped with veins that branch under his skin.

His presence devours the room. Consumes the oxygen. Consumes my oxygen.

It's the reason-well, one of many-that Vincent is always the one I go to in my lonely, late night imaginings. Ol' Reliable to get me to the metaphorical mountain peak.

The man doesn't occupy space-he owns it, warps it, makes you forget there was ever anything else here before him.

But there is something before him.

Something bent over before him, rather.

To be specific, that something is a woman.

The woman, whom I presume can only be the missing Vanessa, has her cheek plastered to the desk surface, so she doesn't see me. That's probably for the best, because I'm slightly preoccupied by the fact that her skirt is hiked up around her waist, her panties twisted around her ankles, and more tortured moans keep sputtering past her lips as Vincent thrusts into her from behind.

I make a sound somewhere between a gasp and a squeak.

The woman, lost in her pleasure, doesn't notice.

But Vincent does.

He turns his head, his movement unhurried, lazy, uncaring. The muscles of his back bunch and flex under the thin silk of his dress shirt.

And our eyes meet.

Time grinds to a complete and total halt.

His eyes are bluer than I remembered. Like glacier ice. Like the Caribbean waters in those vacation brochures I always collect but never act on, because vacations are for people who have fun, people who have sex, people who aren't drowning under the unbearable weight of crushing medical debt and loneliness.

In other words, not for me.

I wait for shock. Or, if not that, for embarrassment. At the very least, I'm bracing for him to bellow at me to get out because he's trying to fuck, goddammit.

I get none of that.

Instead, his lips-wet and glistening with things I don't dare think about-curve into a predatory smile.

Then he winks at me.

"Oh" is the only thing I say, the only thing I can say, like all the other words in the English language have burned up in smoke.

The papers go tumbling from my suddenly numb fingers and scatter across the floor like oversized confetti. In my haste, I trip and bump the door a second time.

It rocks all the way open, rebounds off the wall, and then, with some insane comedic timing from a universe that apparently thinks this whole thing is funny in the extreme, it swings back and closes in my face.

Click.

Gone is the view. Vanessa's moans are back to the muffled but admirably enthusiastic volume they were at when I first exited the elevator. It's just me out in the hallway again, as if that whole thing never happened.

But it did, didn't it?

He winked.

The papers sigh as they settle around my ankles. My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I'm sure the entire building can hear it.

He winked.

What does that mean? Is it a wink like Don't tell? Or is it a wink like You're next, if you want to join?

No. Don't even go there, Row.

Men like Vincent Akopov don't notice women like me. I know that from bitter, first-hand experience.

I'm the girl that guys always befriended to get close to my prettier friends. The dependable one. The "you're like a sister to me" one.

And besides, I remember how Vincent looked at me the day I was hired. He saw me. Saw in me. Saw through me.

Then he glanced away as if I'd suddenly ceased to exist.

As if, by tearing his gaze away without remorse, he was telling me, You are insignificant.

I drop to my knees and try to scoop the papers back into proper order, or at least something close to it. But I'm shaking like a lunatic. I feel like one, too.

I peek up at the door. It's still closed, stubbornly and resolutely.

Did I imagine the whole thing?

No. Impossible. The memory of those blue eyes is too vivid. The amused sneer of his lips. The heat in his gaze when he looked at me.

I clutch the now-disorganized folder to my chest and back away. As I go, the sounds from behind the door grow louder.

I've spent five years watching Vincent from afar. In the cafeteria. At company events. Once, memorably, at the gym in our building, where I nearly fell off the treadmill when he walked in wearing no shirt and running shorts that left little to the imagination.

For those counting at home, that means five years of constructing elaborate fantasies in which, via some heaven-sent miracle, Vincent suddenly noticed me. Where we had a meet-cute straight out of a rom-com. Where he looked at me the way he'd just looked at me through that door.

Except that, in those fantasies, I was confident. Sexy. Not a sweaty, stammering mess with ink on my fingers and a coffee stain on my blouse that I tried to hide this morning with a strategically placed scarf.

I flee toward the elevator, my cheeks redder than ever.

Vanessa's cries reach a crescendo just as the elevator doors seal closed between us.

Only then can I breathe. I lean against the mirrored wall, my reflection showing a woman I barely recognize. Eyes wide. Cheeks flushed. Lips gaping.

Then I laugh, a hysterical sound that bounces off the elevator walls and returns to my ears magnified, intensified, worse and more terrifying in every way.

He winked. I can't stop asking myself the same question: What could that mean? In what universe was that wink an invitation?

The universe where my mother hadn't gotten sick, maybe. Where we hadn't lost our house paying for her treatments. Where I'd been able to take that design internship in Paris instead of the first steady job with health insurance I could find.

A universe where Vincent Akopov would see past the quiet marketing associate who blends into the wallpaper and notice the real me instead.

The elevator dings as it mercifully descends below the thirtieth floor. It's like the journey I took to get here, but played backwards. Déjà vu all over again, but in reverse.

By the time the elevator kisses the ground, I do what I've always done: left the hope behind me.

It's safer than asking what if.

3

VINCE

The door clicks shut. I step away from Vanessa.

"Did you hear something a minute ago?" she asks, adjusting her skirt back down and shimmying her panties back up her legs.

"No."

But that's a fucking lie.

I heard something alright. Saw something. Winked at something before I even knew what I was doing.

It's not my damn fault, though. Something about that girl just drew it out of me. What a fucking irony-buried to the hilt in one woman and a second one takes me by surprise.

But I can't stop thinking about those wide, startled eyes. Her soft Oh. Cheeks flushing crimson, the black sliver of her open mouth as she gawked at me while Van here put on a porn star performance.

Christ, my head hurts from her screaming.

"You should go," I tell her coldly.

Vanessa winces like I struck her. "Was I not⁠-?"

"Don't make this a whole thing." I crack my neck from side to side and adjust the knot in my tie. "You've done good work here, but it's time for you to explore new grounds. You'll be transferred to the CFO's desk. He'll take care of you."

Just like that, her face crumples in horror. "Wait, no! Did I not⁠-"

"Thank you, Ms. Bowman. Safe travels."

I'll forget her name the moment she's gone. But it's for the best that way. Keep them anonymous, keep them meaningless, keep them always with one foot out the door.

Because if you don't care about anything, then nothing can hurt you.

It's for the best.

She wants to cry; fuck knows I've been around enough crying women to see all the signs. The trembling lips, the red-rimmed eyes. Her lipstick is smeared halfway up her cheek.

But then her mouth flattens into an enraged slash. I know what's coming next even before she says it.

"You're an⁠-!"

"-asshole," I finish. "Yes. I know. That is by design." I point toward the door. "Thank you for your service, Vanessa. It's time for you to go now."

Only then does she finally listen. Not happily. Not pleasantly. But she does listen.

Even she knows where the lines are drawn.

As soon as Vanessa leaves, I sit at my desk and pull up the company directory on my computer. I didn't get a good look at the intruder's badge, but I know she came to deliver quarterly reports. Which places her in marketing or finance, most likely.

I scroll through employee photos, searching for those startled doe eyes.

No...

Not that one...

Not her...

There.

Rowan St. Clair. Marketing Associate. Five years with Akopov Industries.

"Rowan," I say aloud, testing the name on my tongue.

I click through to her employee file. Nothing remarkable at first glance. Bachelor's degree in Marketing and Design from Generic State University. Consistent if unremarkable performance reviews-above-average, but never outstanding enough to fast-track for promotion.

I lean back in my chair, intrigued.

Well, that's not quite true. I'm intrigued by the fact that, on the surface, this girl is so utterly unintriguing⁠-

-and yet I can't stop picturing her face.

Oh. Fuck, that single syllable she whispered was a more delicious sound than anything Vanessa ever whined or screamed or moaned.

Oh. Like Rowan had never seen someone fuck before.

Oh. Like she wanted to find out how it feels for herself.

"Let's see what else you're hiding, Ms. St. Clair."

Technically speaking, I'm not supposed to access the HR files. But when your last name is on the building, certain rules become... flexible. A few keystrokes later, and I've got everything I could ever want splayed out before me.

What I find makes me sit up straighter.

Health insurance claims. Lots of them. Not for Rowan, but for a dependent-her mother.

Cancer treatments. Expensive ones.

I dig deeper.

Student loans still not paid off. A modest apartment in the sleazy part of town where ambition goes to die. No savings to speak of.

"Interesting."

I pull up her social media. It's almost nonexistent. A barely-used Instagram with photos of coffee and dog-eared books. No exotic vacations or wild parties.

An image forms in my mind: a woman trapped by circumstance. Working to survive, not to thrive.

An opportunity.

I recognize that hunger. It's what drove my father when he first came to America with nothing but ambition and a suitcase full of dreams.

My phone buzzes. Speak of the devil-it's Andrei himself.

"Father," I answer.

"Still at the office?" he asks in Russian, his accent drenched with snow and vodka even after thirty years in the States.

"Just finishing up."

I chuckle to myself at the little joke. Vanessa "finished up" three times. Even now, I can see her silhouette through the frosted glass of my office window. She keeps peeking over her shoulder like she's wondering if I'm as smitten with her as she is with me.

I'm not, of course. I can't afford to be. In a few short months, my father will step down from his role as the CEO of Akopov Industries.

Then it'll be my turn at the helm.

That's all well and good. But it's not the promotion I'm most excited for.

It's when Andrei hands me his other crown that I'll truly be salivating at everything that's finally mine.

That coronation will take place in the dark. It won't make any headlines. No news station will breathlessly cover the transition of power. No Wall Street motherfucker in a Loro Piana suit will speculate about what it means for the company's stock price.