The Billionaire's Obsession

Chapter 6

After that day, the air in the office changed.For Elizabeth, the hallways felt narrower and every closing elevator door sounded like a heartbeat.Sje told herself Ivan's question was just another psychological experiment, a way for a broken guy to see how a beggar would squirm ‘what do you think me?’She tried to think of him as a monster but the memory was losing it's teeth.Instead, she thought of the way his hand had hesitated before touching the office door, she thought of his peppermint breath. She wasn't running away from him anymore, she was running from the realization that he was becoming human, so she mastered the art of the grand vanish. if Ivan entered a room, Elizabeth became a professional ghost. She once spent 20 minutes hiding in a broom closet with a very confused janitor just avoid Ivan's path.

“You are looking for a mop, dear?” The Janitor asked

“no”Elizabeth whispered pressing her ear to the door

“I'm looking for my dignity”

But Ivan was the apex predator of his own building, he didn't just notice her absence, he mapped it.

one evening as she hurried home through the cooling city air, the silence but was broken by the low predatory hum of a luxury engine the black SUV crawled beside her like a shark in Shallow water.

“So this is the strategy now?” Ivan's voice drifted through the lowered window. He wasn't looking at her, he was looking at the road, his profile etched in granite.“Parkour through the service stairs to avoid the lobby” Elizabeth did not stop.

“it's called exercise, Ivan. You should try it, it's better for the heart than whatever it is you do”

The car stopped, he stepped out his presence immediately swallowing the street lights.

“why are you running Elizabeth?”

she turned around her short temper finally snapping.

“Because you ask questions that don't have answers. What do I think of you? I think you are a man who breaks lives for fan.

What was that supposed to mean?” Ivan did not blink. He took a step into her personal space. The cool chill of his past replaced by the heat that made her skin prickle.

“It means” he said his voice dropping to a gravelly silk “That I like you.I want you to become my girlfriend”

The world didn't just tilt, it did a full backflip.Elizabeth's brain temporarily stalled, she looked for the hidden cameras, the mocking smirk , the punchline.

“No” she hissed though her heart was trying to kick it's way out of her chest.

“No” Ivan tilted his head, genuinely perplexed, as is she had just rejected a gift of oxygen.

“No, you don't get to do this”she shouted her voice trembling with the weight of the last few months.

“You don't get to ruin my family, humiliate me on the street and then offer a title like it's a promotion. Is this the new game? make a beggar fall in love so you can laugh?”

That silence, that terrifying empty silence scared her more than any threat.She flagged a taxi with the desperation of a survivor leaving him standing along in the dark. Elizabeth's rejection had been a sharp, reflexive no but the week that followed was worse than any punishment.

Ivan didn't chase, did not text, did not look her way in the halls.The silence was deafening, then made her feel small, then angry, then worst of all lonely.By the eighth day, was a dream, Elizabeth was a walking disaster, she accidentally filed a tax returns under trash and nearly watered a silk plant in Ivanka's office, then the whispers started.

“Did you see her?”

“The heiress”

“She's practically glued to him”

“I guess the ice king finally found his queen”

Elizabeth's blood turned to lead, she followed a group of gossip interns towards the executive wing.There through the glass, she saw her.She was breathtaking, long legs, hair that cost more than Elizabeth's house and a laugh that sounded like wind chimes.She had her arms wrapped around Ivan's neck, whispering something into his ear.And Ivan, he didn't move, he did not pull away, he looked comfortable.The hurt hit Elizabeth like a physical blow to the stomach.

‘You asked me out because I was a challenge’She thought bitterly ‘But she, she's the prize’

She worked until her eyes burned, leaving the building long after the sunset.She walked hoping the cold air would numb the stinging in her chest.

“you're predictable” a voice sparked from the shadows.

I can was leaning against the car looking exhausted, his tie loosened for the first time.

“Get lost, Ivan” Elizabeth snapped her voice thick

“Go find your GPS or better yet, go find your fiance.I'm sure she is waiting to hug the life out of you”

Ivan's eyes sharpened“You saw Sarah”

“I saw a girl who looks like she belongs in your world”Elizabeth shot back her steeze failing as her lips began to tremble.

“Why did you do it? Why ask me out when you have someone like her, someone pretty, someone completed”

“Elizabeth”

“No, you wanted to see me break again didn't you.You win, congratulations”The tears finally broke cover hot and fast.

“I hate that I looked for you in the hallways today, I hate that I cared.You are a monster Ivan and I'm a fool,”She turned to run but Ivan moved with a speed of a boy used to kill things just to follow the chill.

He grabbed her arm, not with cruelty but with a desperate heavy strength.He didn't explain, he didn't argue,he pulled her into his chest, burying his face into the crook of her neck.Elizabeth froze, she meant to hit him, she meant to scream but the moment her face touched his expensive shirt, the scent of peppermint and something uniquely him flooded her senses.Her hands which had been balled into fists slowly uncurled, clutching the fabric of his coat as she sobbed into his heart. Elizabeth knew that moment that she was gone, Ivan held her so tight that it hurt to breathe, his jaw tight enough to crack stone.

He wasn't looking at her, he was looking at his own trembling hands realizing that for the first time in his life, he wasn't the one in control.

“She is my cousin, you i***t”He whispered into her hair, a ghost of a strained shaky laugh into his voice.Elizabeth's sobs hitched, she pulled back an inch, her tear stained face looking up at him in shock.

“Your what?”

Ivan looked down at her his dark eyes swirling with a hunger and a terror he couldn't his anymore.

“My cousin, she is getting married in a month.She came to talk about the guest list”

He reached out, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheer.His touch was electric making her breath hitch.

“I told you I liked you Elizabeth, I don't lie, I don't have the emotions required to make up stories”

He leaned in his forehead, resting against hers.

“But seeing you cry over me, that's the most painful thing I have ever felt.And I have been hit with the bag full of stones remember”

Elizabeth let out a wet shaky laugh.The suspense in the air was thick enough to suffocate, the stop in the quiet street caught between the past of cruelty and the future they both feared.

“so” Elizabeth whispered her voice trembling as she looked up into the eyes of the man who wasn't supposed to feel.

“What happens now?”

Ivan's grip on her waist tightened.

“Now”He murmured his voice dropping to a dangerous low vibration that vibrated in her very bones.“I stopped being patient”he began to bend down, his movements slow, deliberate and agonizingly focused.

Elizabeth's heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, she saw his eyes flutter shut, felt the warmth of his breath against her lips and instinctively tilted her chin up, her own eyes closing in surrender.But just as the space between them vanished, just as the world narrowed down to the heat of his skin, Ivan stopped, his breath hitched and he froze near millimetres from her lips.Elizabeth's eyes flew open, her heart skipping a bit at the certain suffocating silence.