SWNOVELS Sinful Hearts: Chapter 6
My first plan after leaving Leo’s restaurant involves going directly to Elsa’s office, breaking in, and figuring out exactly how hard she’s fucking my family, since she’s clearly working for Leo.
Screwing me was almost certainly part of that.
I know she must have heard Anya gushing about “knowing me” at Club Venom. I might have been wearing a mask, but between Anya using my fucking name, and my recognizable tattoos—that you can see even when I’m clothed—Elsa absolutely knew who I was.
She didn’t just kiss me because she thought I was some random guy.
She kissed me to get my attention. To seduce me. Which…worked.
I’m just trying to figure out what the point was in fucking me as it pertains to her working with Leo.
Unfortunately, my plan for burgling her office gets scuttled when I pull up outside the Midtown office building that houses Crown and Black. The bank branch on the ground floor is apparently getting wired up for a new and improved security system, which means there’s about twenty cops milling around at every entrance and stairwell.
I mean, the Drakos family has “friends” in the police force. But twenty cops turning a blind eye to me waltzing into a law office at two in the morning? Pushing it.
Five hours later, though, after napping in my car, it’s on.
It’s Saturday. I’m sure that Crown and Black has their paralegals and interns pulling weekend hours, like every other big NYC firm. But it’s still early, and the top three floors that house Crown and Black are empty. Just in case, though, I come in quietly through a maintenance elevator, making sure I avoid the security cameras until I get to Elsa’s office.
It’s locked, of course. But I’ve been picking locks since I was ten, and hers isn’t exactly Fort Knox.
Once inside, I get to work.
Her desktop computer is my first pick, obviously. But it’s password protected, and I don’t have the time to try brute-forcing it, nor do I know Elsa well enough to try guessing random passwords.
I just know her well enough to know the sounds she makes when she comes. To know how sweet her pussy tastes. To know she went fucking wild when I pulled her hair, and spanked her ass.
To know she almost came when I fed her my cum off my fingers.
Enough. I grit my teeth, shaking the distracting replays from my head as my dick turns to steel in my pants. Time enough later to jerk off remembering the night I just spent with her.
Right now, I’m here on business.
The locked file cabinet opens just as easily as the door to her office. I comb through it, looking for anything Reznikov or Stavrin-related. Anything to do with Mirzoyan too, for that matter. But all I find is some flimsy shit pertaining to some building permits for Gavan Tsarenko, who I know also employs Taylor Crown herself for his own legal needs.
I scowl as I close the cabinet with nothing to show for my efforts. It’s the same disappointing result with the files in her desk drawer, and the only things I find in the closet are four librarian-esque skirt suits in varying shades of gray, gray and gray, and a yoga mat.
Fuck.
I’m making a quick poke around the attached private bathroom, complete with shower facilities, when I hear the office door rattling and then opening.
Shit.
I duck back behind the half-closed bathroom door, peering through the door jamb.
It’s fucking her. Elsa’s panting, her chest rising and falling under the sports bra she’s wearing underneath an unzipped hooded running top, together with leggings and jogging shoes.
All black and gray, because of course.
She’s even got her hair up in its typical severe ponytail. I watch as she turns to frown at the doorknob, because I left it unlocked, and she’s probably wondering how she missed locking it the day before.
But she shakes it off, turning to walk over to her desk. I shift to the side to try and get a better view through the cracked door.
…Which fucking creaks when I brush against it.
Goddammit.
Instantly, I hear her sharp intake of breath.
“Whoever the fuck is in there, I’ve got a gun!”
Shit.
“And I’m calling the cops!”
“Hang on.” I stick my hands out of the bathroom doorway first. “Don’t blow my fucking brains out, okay?”
Slowly I poke my head around the corner, where my eyes are instantly met by a furious and spooked Elsa. She’s not holding a gun, but she is pointing a can of pepper spray at me.
“That doesn’t look like a gun to me, Elsa.”
“No?” she spits venomously, still brandishing it.
“No. That’s false advertising.”
She squints at me. “How about I use it on you anyway, and you can file a complaint about false advertising afterward?”
“Nah, that’s okay.” My eyes drag from her cold, hazel gaze, to the nozzle of the pepper spray, still aimed at me. “Could you not point that at me?”
“Could you kindly explain what the fuck you’re doing in my office?”
Uh, not really.
I also don’t want to tell her I know about her double-crossing. Not yet. Not until I’ve backed her into a corner she’ll never get out of.
I step fully out of the bathroom, my hands still raised. “I was just dropping some paperwork off for Thermopylae Acquisitions.”
She turns, and for the first time, my eyes land on the three marks on her neck. Something savage growls inside of me—something hungry for more at the sight of my mark on her.
She’s obviously slapped concealer over them. But either from her run or because I bit and sucked too hard for them to be hidden away, they’re there for all the world to see.
And for me to remember. Which my cock instantly does.
“At seven-fifteen in the morning on a Saturday?” she sneers.
“Yep. Early riser.”
“So where are they?”
Well, this is unraveling quickly.
I grin. “Guess I forgot them in the car.”
“Right.”
Slowly, I lower my hands. Thankfully, Elsa also lowers her pepper spray. She also stiffens and very quickly zips her running top back up over the sports bra—high enough to cover her neck wounds.
“What were you doing in my private lavatory?”
“Taking a piss, what else?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Well, if you’re done breaking and entering—”
“I wasn’t breaking and entering.”
“My office door was locked last night.”
“Huh. Damn cleaners.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Speaking of which, what are you doing here at this hour?”
Elsa frowns. “I work here, Hades. Some of us work for a living.”
The haughty “over it” tone is the typical one she always uses when she talks to me. But she’s overdoing it.
Overcompensating.
I can see it in the flush on her cheeks that’s from more than just her run. I can see it in the way she refuses to meet my eyes, as if she knows that if she does so, I’ll see right into her, and reveal all of her secrets.
Little does she know that the one secret she’s most desperately trying to hide from me isn’t a goddamn secret at all.
But I can use that.
I could tell her right here and now. Hell, I could turn on the psycho inside of me, get all dangerous and threatening, and yank the truth about her involvement with the Russian out of her right now.
But I could also wait. I could also slowly box her in and let her build her own cage. If I let her know I know about her double-crossing now, it’s all over. I might get something out of her, but what I get is what I get.
If, however, I don’t let her know I’m onto her, she might just show me even more. If she thinks I have no idea she’s working with Leo, and furthermore have no idea it was her I was fucking into a whimpering, shaking, subby little mess last night, she won’t guess that I’m watching her every move.
Learning her every secret.
Waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.
“Little early for the office, isn’t it?”
“Little late for you to still be up, isn’t it?” she shoots back.
I grin. Her usual vitriol is…shaky right now. She’s trying too hard to sell it.
It’s very amusing to watch.
“Do anything fun last night?”
She groans. “Hades, please leave. I have things to do.”
“I’m just making polite conversation.”
She rolls her eyes. “My night was fine, thank you.”
“Yeah? What’d you do?”
Elsa’s eyes snap to mine. “What do you want, Hades?”
I chuckle. “Jesus Christ, dial down the suspicions. I’m just trying to be nice.”
“Which is exactly why I’m suspicious.”
“Want to know what I did last night?”
“Not reall—”
“I met a smoking hot stranger.”
Her mouth purses. “How thrilling for you.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, turning to stroll past her shelves of legal books, running my fingertip over the spines. “Fucked her brains out, too.”
Elsa is silent behind me. I smirk, still idly examining her books.
“Three times.” Slowly, my brow furrows as I turn to glance at her over my shoulder. “Or was it four?”
Her face turns crimson and her jaw drops open and then snaps shut again, as if we’re in the climax of Edgar Allan Poe’s Telltale Heart and she’s terrified that the truth will just tumble out.
“What do you think, Elsa?” I smile broadly. She shivers as I slowly close the distance between us, until I’m standing right in front of her. “Was it three times, or four?”
She swallows uneasily, her face burning hotter and hotter, like it might combust under the pressure.
“I…how the hell should I know?” she mumbles, her hands clenched at her sides.
“That is a great question.”
The energy between us hums. She swallows again, her lower lip quivering before her teeth firmly latch into it.
“I really think you should leave. I have work to do,” she finally blurts.
I just smile, letting my eyes pierce into hers before she yanks her gaze away with a shudder. It’s only then that I release her from my gaze.
I turn and make for the door.
“Hades.”
Halfway through the door, I turn with a smirk on my lips and a raised brow.
“Don’t ever break into my office again.”
“Noted. Enjoy your weekend…kitten.”
She gasps, and I swear she’s about to throw up.
Then I leave, with a hungry grin on my face.