The Billionaire Daddy's Virgin

Chapter 2 Episode 2

I’m aware that there are more forceful words in the English language. Words like “hell no” and “I don’t want this” and “please go f**k yourself with the wrong end of a stapler, you birthday-ruining bastard.” But my brain is fritting out, and his hand is moving lower, pawing at my hip, and I don’t understand what’s happening.

“I’ve watched you for months,” he murmurs against my hair.

His fingers find the hem of my blouse and slip underneath. Warm skin against warm skin.

I make a feeble squeak.

He presses closer. I can feel him against my stomach. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about this? About you⁠—”

“S-stop…” It comes out weak and breathy. “This is… I don’t…”

But I’m not pushing him away. Why am I not pushing him away? Is it just that, despite him being an asshole, there’s no denying he’s a very good-looking asshole? Can it really be as simple as that plus the fact that I haven’t yet had a man take me all the way, so I’m desperate for any scrap of his attention? Am I truly that pathetic?

His lips brush my neck. His hand sneaks higher, fingers tracing my ribs.

“Kir.” I try again, firmer this time, channeling my best Bulldog Jillian impression. “We can’t.”

“We can.” His mouth drags along my jaw, hot and open. “We already are.”

His other hand comes up to cup my face and tilts it toward him. His lips hover over mine. Close enough that I can feel his breath. That’s cinnamon-y, too.

Say it, dammit! screams the voice in my head. Say literally anything that doesn’t sound like an eager invitation or a porn star’s come-on!

This is all new territory. I’m simply not the girl this happens to. I’m no willowy supermodel; I’m five-foot-four on a good day. My dirty blonde hair can never decide if it wants to be tropical-breeze-tousled wavy or just damn it’s humid frizzy. My eyes are brown, plain as mud, nothing special. I have a face that gets described as “cute” by people who are being generous and “forgettable” by people who aren’t.

Add all that up and you get a twenty-five-year-old executive assistant who’s never had s*x.

Not for lack of opportunity, exactly. More like lack of... I don’t know. Confidence? Interest? Both? Neither? Some unfortunate combination of choice and circumstance that left me perpetually single while everyone around me figured out what all the fuss was about, what happens when X goes in Y and babies and/or orgasms come out.

So riddle me this: Why is Kir Lazarev’s hand up my shirt right now?

Is this a power thing? A conquest thing? Does he actually find me attractive, or does he just think I’m pathetic enough to say yes?

“See?” His thumb traces my lower lip. “You can’t say it.”

As I’m trying to figure out what I can say, he walks me backward until I hit the window. I almost scream when I touch it, because the glass is freezing through the sheer silk of my shabby, sweat-stained blouse. November in New York City is “cold as a witch’s tit”—that’s what my little brother Gideon would say. But Gideon is in a rehab facility two hours north, so the things he might say or do are completely irrelevant right now. Though I sure wouldn’t mind if he was here right now.

Kir’s knee wedges itself between my thighs. His hand is still under my shirt, still in the relatively chaste territory of my belly, but climbing higher and higher toward something more intimate. His fingertips brush the underwire of my bra.

I break away, gasping. “Wait⁠—!”

“No. No more waiting.” He dips his head to my neck again. Teeth scrape and nip until I almost shriek out loud. “I’m done f*****g waiting.”

My head falls back against the glass. The city glitters fifty floors below us. Anyone could see. If they looked up, if they had binoculars or a telescope or⁠—

That’s a good point, actually. I try that on for size. “Kir, someone could see!”

“I hope they do. Let them watch.”

His hand covers my breast through the thin lace of my bra. He squeezes and I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

This is so surreal. This is my boss. This is happening at my desk, in an empty office, at almost midnight on my birthday.

But the train is full steam ahead and I don’t know how to stop it.

“I’ve imagined you like this so many times,” he murmurs. “Flushed and breathless, saying my name.”

His hand abandons its trek upward and slides down instead. Over my stomach. Toward the waistband of my skirt.

I grab his wrist. “Kir, I really think we need to⁠—”

We both freeze. That wasn’t me who said that.

And if it wasn’t him and it wasn’t me…

In unison, Kir and I look up at the pool of darkness in the mouth of the hallway. It’s not as empty as it was a minute ago. On the contrary, it’s filled almost unbelievably.

There’s a man standing there. A huge man. Impossibly broad shoulders, gray hair swept straight backward. He’s in a midnight-black suit, white shirt, no tie, and the puff of chest hair I can see in the deep V of his unbuttoned collar is as thick and silver as his beard.

I’ve never laid eyes on him before, but I know at once:

FROM: Office of the Chairman

Effective immediately, Ms. Rae Everett will report directly to the Office of the Chairman.

Kir’s hand yanks away from me.

He steps back so fast he nearly trips over my chair. His face has gone white, like someone just drained all the blood out of him with a straw.

I’ve worked for Kir Lazarev for eighteen months. In that time, I’ve seen him eviscerate board members and watched him reduce a senior VP to tears over a typo. I’ve witnessed him hang up on a Fortune 500 CEO mid-sentence because “I don’t have time for this level of stupidity.”

I’ve never seen him scared.

“Father.” That’s something else I’ve never heard before: Kir’s voice cracking. “I didn’t know you were in New York.”

Lukas Lazarev doesn’t respond. He just stands there. Filling the hallway. Filling the whole damn floor, it feels like.

He’s bigger than I imagined. The photos don’t do him justice. In pictures, he looks intimidating. In person, he looks like a giant that could crush you without noticing.

He reaches into his jacket pocket and withdraws something. I can’t make out what it is until he sticks one in his mouth, cups his hands over it, and strikes a lighter. A cigarette, I see. The flames dance over the rough planes of his cheeks.

While his hands work, his eyes sweep across the scene. I can only imagine how it looks from his perspective. Me, the lowly assistant, pressed against the window with my blouse untucked and my lipstick smeared halfway up my cheek. Kir, three feet away by now and retreating further, hands shoved in his pockets like he doesn’t know what else to do with them.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening.

“I flew in this evening,” Lukas says. He speaks in a baritone that vibrates me from head to toe. “I thought I’d stop by. See how things were running.”

“Everything’s fine.” Kir sounds like he’s choking. “We were just⁠—”

“I can see what you were just.”

What’s the right play for me here? Move, probably. I should fix my clothes, grab my bag, make some excuse, and book it for the exit. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty nice. But my legs won’t cooperate. I’m stuck against the glass like a bug pinned to a board.

Lukas’s gaze lands on me and skewers me in place. Any thought I might’ve had of moving vanishes in a puff of the smoke from his cigarette.

“And you are?” He takes another drag. The light dances over his hand. His thick fingers are mottled with scars and adorned with silver rings.

“Rae Everett.” It comes out as the meekest whisper anyone’s ever emitted. I clear my throat and try to sound less like a frightened mouse. “I’m, um… I work here. As a, uh, assistant. Executive assistant.”

He looks at Kir, then back at me. Something moves behind his eyes. Whatever it is, it frightens me. It’s like seeing the shadow of a shark swim below the surface of water you’re really, really not supposed to be swimming in.

Lazarev Global has been around for forty years. According to company legend, Lukas built it from nothing. He started in shipping, expanded into real estate, then tech, then about a dozen other industries I still don’t really understand. Whatever he does, he’s apparently very good at it, because the whole shebang is worth billions now. Maybe tens of billions, I don’t actually know. The numbers get awfully fuzzy at that level.

I got hired five years ago. It was an entry-level position, nothing special. I answered phones and fetched coffee and tried not to screw up. Then Kir took over as CEO eighteen months back. He plucked me from the assistant pool for reasons I never understood.

When Kir took the reins, Lukas stepped back to chairman of the board. Technically speaking, he’s no longer involved in the day-to-day operations. But his name still echoes through the halls, always with a whisper of ten parts fear and one part awe.